• 1 Turkish Assembly, “Population Panning Law, No: 557,” Official Gazette publication on April 10, 1965 (...)

1On April 1, 1965, the Turkish Assembly enacted a new law on family planning that allowed citizens to limit pregnancies through modern contraceptive methods as the importation and sale of contraceptives and contraceptive materials were liberalized.1 Ministry of Health was charged with promoting, training, educating, and applying family planning programs in cooperation with the military, public, and private organizations.

• 2 Turkish Assembly, “Turkish Penal Code, Law No: 3038,” Official Gazette publication on June 23, 1936 (...)

2This new law on population control represents a radical break with the pronatalist attitude of the country, where antinatalist thinking was unimaginable a generation ago. The war-torn republic was almost deserted in the 1920s and reaching up to 15 million citizens was a national pride expressed in the “Hymn of the 10^th Year,” written in 1933. In an effort to create a sanitary and fertile state, the government conducted a nationwide health mobilization and adopted harsh pronatalist policies, so that the promotion and use of contraception was defined as a crime against racial integrity and health, punishable by six months to two years in prison.2 By the mid-1950s, country’s population had barely reached 24 million, yet the initial public discussions about population control had already taken place. So, what caused Türkiye to adopt an antinatalist policy and reverse all efforts to repopulate the country? That is the key question this article attempts to respond.

• 3 The list of these twenty countries, based on the date of adoption of the antinatalist policies were (...)
• 4 Matthew Connelly, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population. Cambridge, Mass., (...)

3Since Türkiye was not alone in this population policy transition in the 1960s, as twenty Third World countries representing half of the world’s population introduced antinatalist policies and fertility reduction programs almost simultaneously,3 the issue has been treated in the literature as part of a global population control movement. The scholars dealing with the changing population policies of this era almost in consensus that the population control movements in these countries are a byproduct of the global hegemonic configuration of the post-World War II (WWII) world.4

• 5 Simon Szreter, “The Idea of Demographic Transition and the Study of Fertility Change: A Critical In (...)
• 6 The President’s Committee to Study the United States Military Assistance Program, “Composite Report (...)

4Szreter mentions that global security concerns due to the ideological threat of communism in contested areas, where it was feared that the masses would evolve into organized masses that would turn to the “dark side,” were a major driving force behind the US led promotion of population control.5 Indeed, the first official report advising the US government to assist developing countries on population control was prepared by the Presidential Advisory Board known as the “Draper Committee” in 1959, which was commissioned to study on the “US Military Assistance Program”.6

• 7 Matthew Connelly, “Seeing beyond the State: The Population Control Movement and the Problem of Sove (...)
• 8 Dennis Hodgson, “Demography as Social Science and Policy Science,” Population and Development Revie (...)
• 9 Arturo Escobar, “Beyond the Third World: Imperial Globality, Global Coloniality and Anti-Globalisat (...)

5Other scholarly interpretations mostly emphasize the definition and the scope of this hegemonic configuration. Connelly highlights the role of activists, scientists and especially nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in lobbying for population control through transnational coalitions.7 Hodgson underscores the political orientation of the demographers’ population theories in making population control a prerequisite for the modernization of Third World countries.8 Escobar argues that population control became part of the developmentalist discourse for developing world to sustain imperial globality and global coloniality after WWII.9

• 10 Heinrich Hartmann and Corinna R. Unger, ed., A World of Populations: Transnational Perspectives on (...)

6These global hegemony-security narrative on population control, not necessarily ignore the national and local conditions such as public movements, cultural and religious values, personal choices, political interests, power struggles, and local resistance since the diffusion of the population control ideas and its local execution requires profound “transnational coalitions.”10 However, the scholarly works prioritizing local dimensions of the global population movement are very few. In that respect, this article, focuses primarily on the national interest in the adoption of antinatalist policies in the 1960s, with particular attention to the Turkish case.

• 11 Z. Y. Hershlag, Turkey: The Challenge of Growth, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1968, p. 139.
• 12 Korkut Boratav, Türkiye İktisat Tarihi 1908-2009 (Economic History of Türkiye), 21^st ed., Ankara, I (...)

8The full-fledged global connection was ensured by the 1950 elections, when the newly elected Democrat Party (DP) vehemently challenged the etatist regime and the still existing monopolistic tendencies of the state, and enthusiastically implemented the economic program recommended by the advisors from the US.11 With the support of foreign aid, the DP government was able to enjoy the prosperity it had promised its voters during the first three years of its rule. Favorable weather conditions, rising agricultural prices as a result of the Korean War, and the expansion of cultivation with the help of mechanization had boosted agricultural production and revenues, which had relatively raised the living standards of all segments of the population in a short time.12 And, as expected, there was not a single discussion of the negative economic and social effects of population growth until 1953.

• 13 Anne O. Krueger, Turkey: Foreign Trade Regimes & Economic Development, New York, Columbia Universit (...)

9Yet the country ran a current deficit due to rising imports financed by short-term loans, and the central bank’s shortage of foreign exchange reserves became evident after the rapid decline in exports by 1953 due to the poor harvest and falling market prices. The need for foreign exchange became so acute in the mid-1950s, that the government made great efforts to obtain foreign debt, not only from US or international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, but also from various Western European countries through bilateral agreements.13

• 14 John White, Pledged to Development: A Study of International Consortia and the Strategy of Aid, Ove (...)

10Withdrawing from the aggressive investment agenda and governing on the basis of sound planning and coordination was the main request of the donors in which the DP government officials did not feel much pressure to listen to, as they were still able to find other sources of credit and also confident on the US support in the last instance, because of their NATO alliance.14 However, by 1958, the economic situation had deteriorated to such an extent that Türkiye could no longer borrow from abroad, and US grants, which were given on the basis of the US anti-communist interest, had also dwindled. External pressures, coupled with the rising costs of political unrest in the country, forced the DP to announce a stabilization program on August 4, 1958.

• 15 IMF Archives, ‘Stabilization Program of the Turkish Government,’” July 23, 1958.
• 16 Cemal Mıhçıoğlu, “Devlet Planlama Teşkilatının Kuruluş Günleri (The Founding days of the State Plan (...)
• 17 Mümtaz Soysal, “Yeni Bir Bakanlığın Kuruluşu (The Foundation of a new Ministry),” Ankara Üniversite (...)

11The program included de facto devaluation, restraint on government expenditures, and liberalization of the import regime, as well as commitment to planning and coordination, which was a reiteration of an IMF Report released two weeks earlier.15 On the other hand, the success of the ruling government depended heavily on the support of its constituents, especially the small farmers and artisans who clearly had the most to lose from a planned development focused on industrialization,16 so they had neither the intention nor the knowledge to apply strategic planning. And made some ad hoc attempts to satisfy the lenders.17

• 18 Cemal Mıhçıoğlu, “Yine Devlet Planlama Örgütünün Kuruluşu Üzerine (Again on the Foundation of the S (...)

12Faced with a lack of credibility that could lead to further turbulence in the economy, the government was forced to prepare a National Development Planning (NDP), under the guidance of a reputable foreign advisor. For this purpose, Jan Tinbergen, a prominent Dutch economist, and a senior development-planning consultant was recommended by Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Assistant Secretary General, Flint Cahan,18 and the DP government invited him to Türkiye in March 1960.

• 19 Ansley J. Coale and Edgar M. Hoover, Population Growth and Economic Development, Princeton, N.J, Pr (...)

13Along with the other developmentalist economists, Tinbergen devoted himself to the theory of the inverse relationship between population and development, which had been developed by the demographer Ansley J. Coale and the economist Edgar M. Hoover in 1958.19 In their study on the projection of the Indian economy and demography, Coale and Hoover demonstrated that population growth has a negative impact on economic development in the following ways:

• 21 Frank W. Notestein, “Reminiscences: The Role of Foundations, the Population Association of America, (...)
• 22 Allen C. Kelley, “The Population Debate in Historical Perspective: Revisionism Revised,” in Populat (...)

14As expected, the project was sponsored by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBDR),21 and following the Coale-Hoover thesis, population control became fully embedded in the core of developmentalist discourse and was mentioned as an indispensable part of many developing countries’ NDP’s in the 1960s. Furthermore, it also became an essential criterion for the international lending agreements of the IMF and World Bank as well as for US foreign aid policy.22

• 23 Jan Tinbergen, Reshaping the International Order: A Report to the Club of Rome, New York, E.P. Dutt (...)
• 24 Jan Tinbergen, “Demographic Development and the Exhaustion of Natural Resources,” Population and De (...)

15Thus, Tinbergen, the prominent developmentalist economist of the era, states that it is the duty of states struggling with poverty to create conditions that reduce population growth,23 and he defines family planning not only as a feasible solution to accelerate development, but also as the only weapon left to the poorest populations to improve their situation.24

• 25 Gunn mentions that the US was not clueless about the coup, yet he finds no convincing evidence that (...)

17The relapse into economic hardship accompanied by social unrests, arguably with some degree of hegemonic intervention,25 prepared the ground for the military coup and on May 27, 1960. The military junta took control of the Turkish Republic and immediately set up a governing mechanism made up of the soldiers, the National Unity Committee, Milli Birlik Komitesi (MBK), which exercised direct control over the state until September 15, 1961.

• 26 MBK General Meeting, Milli Birlik Komitesi Genel Kurul Toplantısı, Vol.1, Meeting 9, September 10, (...)
• 27 The archival documents clearly indicates that the intention to establish the SPO was to satisfy the (...)

18The initial concern of the MBK was to obtain international legitimacy and to resolve the acute financial turmoil. Therefore, the first statement on the coup declaration was a commitment to the principles of NATO, and one of the first decisions the MBK made just eighteen days after the coup was to create an SPO to be in charge of economic and social planning,26 in the hope of meeting the lenders’ requirements.27 Whatever the motive, this new era signifies the rupture of the state apparatus from the populist and unplanned export economy of the 1950s based on agricultural mechanization to a different kind of rationally planned welfare state based on import-substituting industrialization in the early 1960s, which inevitably brought population planning onto the agenda.

• 28 Beatrice Grapon and Adnan Çelik, “From Tribal Chiefs to Marxist Activists: Kurdistan from 1946 to 1 (...)
• 29 Phebe Marr, The Modern History of Iraq, 3^rd ed., Boulder, Westview Press, 2012, pp. 104–6.
• 30 Metin Heper, The State and Kurds in Turkey: The Question of Assimilation, Basingstoke, Palgrave Mac (...)

20The primary national hegemony-security concern of the Turkish Republic in the 1920s and 1930s was the Kurdish insurgencies in the east, which suddenly flared up again after the Iraqi revolution in July 1958, when the Kurds, under the leadership of their tribal leader Mustafa Barzani, established a semi-autonomous status in northern Iraq.28 The attempt to achieve full autonomy led to conflicts with the Iraqi government, which had sparked a series of uprisings in the 1960s.29 Turkish security authorities were alarmed about the possibility of this unrest spilling over into Türkiye and went to great lengths to alienate the Kurdish uprisings in Iraq.30

• 31 “Bir Kürdistan hükümeti Için DP grubu içinde çalışanlar varmış (There was a group in DP working to (...)
• 32 Ümit Akçay, Kapitalizmi Planlamak: Türkiye’de Planlama ve DPT’nin Dönüşümü (Planning Capitalism: Pl (...)
• 33 Hüseyin Yayman, Türkiye’nin Kürt Sorunu Hafızası (The Memory of Türkiye on the Kurdish Problem),” I (...)

21In the first days of the Turkish coup of 1960, 485 Kurdish notables were brought to the camp in Sivas and 55 of them, accused of advocating the establishment of a separate Kurdish state within the DP government, were exiled.31 Furthermore, the leader of the military cadres, General Cemal Gürsel, personally requested the establishment of a social planning division within the SPO to deal mainly with the Kurdish issue.32 And a subdivision called the ‘Eastern Group’ immediately began drafting the “Eastern Plan.” The document was classified as a national security file to be followed by the forthcoming governments as well.33

• 34 Rıdvan Akar and Can Dündar, Ecevit ve Gizli Arşivi (Ecevit and his Secret Archive), 2^nd ed., Ankara (...)

22The copy of the document was found in the archives of the Minister of Labor of the 1961 government and later Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit, who had found it on his desk on the day of his appointment.34 Resembling the earlier Kurdish reports of the 1930s, the Eastern Plan envisages the following measures to change the population structure in favor of the Turks:

• 36 MBK General Meeting, Milli Birlik Komitesi Genel Kurul Toplantısı, Vol. 1, Meeting 24, October 17, (...)

23As shown above, controlling Kurdish population was a serious security problem for the military officials in the early 1960s, which they utilized the same old tools: assimilation, mobilization, and forced migration to deal with.36 However, MBK minutes of meetings tracked between June 1960 and November 1961, shows no evidence that they considered population control as an additional measure to limit Kurdish fertility. It could also be argued that the antinatalist measures in the ethnic base were not a traditional tool of the army to deal with fear of unrest or secession, as these measures have long-term effects and have the potential to further reinforce separatist ideas.

• 37 Those countries were Pakistan, South Korea, China, Türkiye, Kenya, Malaysia, Nepal, Jamaica, Iran, (...)

25In addition to global population movement, the 1950s and 1960s also represent mass migration and rapid urbanization in many parts of the developing world. Twelve of twenty countries, including Türkiye, that switched on to population control policies before 1970 experienced a net increase in urbanization rates of 30% or more between 1950 and 1965.37 The metropoles, on the other hand, the epicenters of migration, reached much higher urbanization rates. The population of Istanbul almost tripled in twenty years between 1950 and 1970, rising from 1.2 million to 3 million inhabitants.

• 38 Municipality of Istanbul, İstatistik Yıllığı (Annual of İstanbul), Istanbul: Istanbul Belediye Matb (...)

26These rapidly growing cities, especially metropolitan areas, have inevitably absorbed government capacity to provide basic public health, education, housing, and employment services. The changing figure in Istanbul is striking. As for the change in health services between 1950 and 1960, statistical record show that the number of doctors and the number of beds increased by 60% and 49%, respectively. Yet the number of patients increased dramatically by 162%, which signifies a huge deterioration due to migration.38

• 39 Kemal Karpat, The Gecekondu: Rural Migration and Urbanization, Cambridge (UK), New York, Cambridge (...)

28The housing issue was one of the key concerns of the time. Figures indicate that between 1950 and 1960, only 9,110 houses and 12,353 apartment buildings were built, which could accommodate a maximum 43% of the population growth during that period. Furthermore, being a householder was too expensive for the migrants to afford, so shantytowns, gecekondu, were built on the outskirts of the city, reaching up to 120,000 units in the early 1960s, housing about 660,000 people, more than a third of the city’s population.39

• 40 Turkish Statistical Institute, Mahkumlar İstatistiği (Prisoner Statistics), Ankara, Devlet İstatist (...)
• 41 Oğuz Işık and M. Melih Pınarcıoğlu, Nöbetleşe Yoksulluk: Gecekondulaşma ve Kent Yoksulları: Sultanb (...)

30Contrary to the literature suggesting a positive correlation between rapid urbanization and crime rates, which might lead governments to impose population controls, prison statistics of the era provide no evidence of an increase but of a relative decrease in Istanbul.40 Solidarity among migrants who had migrated from the same rural spot, hemsehrilik, and the maintenance of existing rural ties seem to have ensured that migrants could cope with poverty and other social problems.41

• 42 Kenan Taşpınar, “Şehirlerin Büyümesi (Growth of the cities),” Forum, July 1, 1956.

31However, economic, social, and cultural burdens between locals and migrants were still intact. Turkish newspapers and articles from the 1950s indicate that the “population problem” was not caused by its sudden growth but by the increasing complaints of local citizens and columnists about the growing migration and its negative effects on locals due to the sharing of limited resources such as health, transportation, accommodation, and employment.42

• 43 Şerif Mardin, “İstikbalimizdeki kütle problemleri hakkında (About the problems of the masses in the (...)
• 44 Eric J. Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, 4th ed. London; New York: I.B. Tauris & Co., 2017, p. 23 (...)

32Another fear was the social problems that could arise from these migrants, 14% of whom were illiterate, such as the promotion of banality and the inculcation of conformist and populist herd behavior,43 which had already taken place in Istanbul on September 6 and 7, 1955. Rising tensions between Greece and Türkiye over the status of Cyprus prompted the Turkish government to organize a ‘spontaneous’ demonstration by students and a limited mob to display the nationalist fervor, which got completely out of hand and developed first into a pogrom against Greek businesses and then into a general attack on their visible wealth mostly by the migrants. All in all, 5,622 houses owned by Christians and Jews in Istanbul had been ransacked.44 Although the migrants were not responsible for the inception of this public insanity, it could well be argued that the social, cultural, economic, and religious detachment between these newcomers and the ‘oldest’ inhabitants of the city inevitably allowed the unfortunate events to escalate.

• 45 The right to contraception and abortion was one of the central mottos of the sexual revolution of t (...)

33Unlike its Western counterparts, and just like the many other developing countries, Türkiye’s antinatalist movement in the 1960s did not involve any mass public protest on the contraceptive rights,45 rather it was driven by a top-down government initiative, with some key local public health and economic figures committing themselves to raising public awareness of the virtues of population control.

• 46 Ragıp Üner and Nusret Fişek, Türkiye’de Doğum Kontrolü Uygulaması Üzerine İncelemeler (Analysis on (...)
• 47 Ibid., pp. 131–33.
• 48 Turkish Medical Association, Nusret Fişek ile Söyleşi, p. 11.

34The very first formal attempt to challenge the ongoing pronatalist stance of the state was the petition of Dr. Zekai Tahir Burak to the Ministry of Health as early as 1958 asking to allow contraceptive use to stop the increasing number of abortion cases causing maternal mortality, which he estimated as more than 10.000 annually.46 The Ministry of Health commissioned him to chair a committee to investigate the issue immediately. As a result, the committee was convinced that it was the Penal Code, which prohibited abortion and use of contraceptive methods, that led pregnant women to search for disguised, unsterile, and dangerous operations to terminate the pregnancy and endanger their lives. They therefore called on the Ministry of Health to repeal the Penal Code immediately.47 Since the time and political climate were not ripe for the antinatalist discussions, the Commission’s report disappeared after some correspondence between the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Justice and was never taken into consideration.48

• 49 Ibid., p. 10.
• 50 Fakir Baykurt, “Aşırı çoğalma (Excessive Multipication),” Cumhuriyet, April 12, 1959.

35It was another public health professional, Dr. Nusret Fişek, also the undersecretary for the Ministry of Health between 1960 and 1965, who was influential in the policy change as he authored the first draft of the Population Planning Law himself. In his memoirs, Fişek admits that he devoted himself for population control after reading a short story of Fakir Baykurt, an award-winning pastoral novelist, in a daily newspaper.49 In his story, Baykurt portrays three new cemeteries in an Anatolian village belonging to three young women who had lost their lives by performing an unsterile abortion themselves, and he further asks readers to consider the economic and social pressures that forced these girls to self-abort and kill themselves.50

• 51 Haluk Cillov, “İktisat ve ticaret ‘Şehirlerimizde nüfus hızla artıyor’ (Economy and trade, populati (...)
• 52 Haluk Cillov, “İktisat ve Ticaret ‘1960 Nüfusumuz (Our population),’” Milliyet, November 16, 1960.

36In addition to the public health initiators, the prominent local economists began promoting population control as a part of the global developmentalist discourse in the early 1960s. Haluk Cillov, an economics professor and columnist, has written couple of articles about the overpopulation in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Prior to the 1960s his focus was primarily on excessive population growth in cities due to internal migration and the problems that may cause. The overall population growth or its economic implications was not on his agenda.51 Yet by the 1960s, he changed his view on the very same problem, as he claimed that the population growth was detrimental to economic development as a factor in reducing per capita GNP. He further added that reducing population growth should be a priority for all non-industrialized countries.52

• 53 Kenneth W. Rose, “The Rockefeller Foundation’s Fellowship Program in Turkey, 1925-1983,” The First (...)
• 54 United Nations, “Proceedings of the World Population Conference, Belgrade 1965, Volume I Summary Re (...)

37It should also be mentioned that both Fişek and Cillov were Rockefeller Foundation fellows,53 and Cillov was among the Turkish delegation to the Second World Population Conference held in Belgrade in 1965, where population control became a global norm.54 Therefore, these first local population control initiators were not only well aware of the global population control movement, but in active interaction with the global environment.

• 55 J. Mayone Stycos, “The Potential Role of Turkish Village Opinion Leaders in a Program of Family Pla (...)

38The public attitude on the antinatalist discourse of the early 1960s was not clear. The only source of measurement was the first Knowledges, Attitudes and Practices (KAP) survey designed and conducted in 1963 by the Rockefeller Foundations Population Council. As the name of the designer implies, the aim of the survey was to demonstrate the need for contraception and to provide another justification for the antinatalist stance. Yet, the opposition for the birth control in villages can be observed from the result as the majority of villagers responded that rapid population growth would be better for Türkiye in the next decade and the ideal family size would be four or more children. Moreover, 64% of the imams, of whom 22% of villagers accepted as the main source of influence for birth control, declared that they disapprove it.55

• 56 Ragıp Üner and Nusret Fişek, Türkiye’de Doğum Kontrolü Uygulaması Üzerine İncelemeler (Analysis on (...)
• 57 Ibid., pp. 143–44.
• 58 The religious view on birth control was controversial and subject to the political power exploitati (...)

39The concept of “overpopulation,” accepted by the military as a given, and their full support for the antinatalist vision were thus based not only on foreign conditions but also on their own security, economic, and social reasons, exacerbated by rapid urbanization. And they took some provocative antinatalist initiatives including convening the Supreme Council of Health to report on the urgency of the birth control,56 and obtaining written consent from the Ministry of Religious Affairs to ensure the morality of birth control,57 which switched sides after the military handed over power to the political parties in the mid-1960s.58

• 59 Prime Ministry State Planning Organization, First Five-Year Development Plan (1963-1967), Ankara, S (...)

41The first official discussions took place during the vote on the first NDP in November 1962. The development plan was based on an aggressive 7% annual growth target. And the current population and fertility levels, described as a natural cause that impedes growth by reducing government savings, a reality that distorts the social order, a reason for maternal and infant mortality, and a source of excessive labor leading to undesirable unemployment and internal migration, were urged to be mitigated by effective antinatalist policies.59

• 60 Republic Senate Minutes of Meeting (CSTS), Cumhuriyet Senatosu Tutanak Dergisi, November 10, 1962, (...)
• 61 Turgut Metiner, “Turkey,” in Family Planning and Population Programs; A Review of World Development (...)

43The petition was approved by a vote of 49 to 32, and then rejected during the re-voting by a vote of 59 to 44, and the antinatalist plan was ratified.60 However, no attempt was made to lift the antinatalist restrictions until 1965, presumably not only to buy time to gain additional antinatalist public support, but also to build a sophisticated structure before implementing the population control recommended by the Population Council, which further reinforced its activities in Türkiye by providing personnel to assist in planning, field training, and implementation of family planning.61

• 62 The KAP survey was only mentioned as a justification for the antinatalist stance. However, the demo (...)
• 63 National Assembly Minutes of Meeting (MMTD), Millet Meclisi Tutanak Dergisi, Term 4, Vol. 34, Meeti (...)

47Although the primary motivation of the law was the economy and development, the longest debates were over its implications on health. Antinatalists’ arguments that the new law would reduce maternal mortality, high abortion rates, childcare shortages, and unmet need for contraception based on the KAP survey found common support.62 Yet, the pronatalists questioned the reliability of medical devices and their possible side effects, as well as the mass distribution of contraceptives without any control, which they feared could lower fertility to irreversible levels.63

• 64 MMTD, Term 4, Vol. 33, Meeting 19, December 8, 1964, pp. 745–47.
• 65 MMTD, Term 4, Vol. 34, Meeting 25, December 17, 1964, pp. 208–9.

48The Malthusian fears of high birth rates and scarce resources were not present in many deputies, who, on the contrary, complained about the low population density in the Anatolian peninsula and recommended focusing on agricultural efficiency rather than fearing scarcity of resources.64 Likewise, they also had an opposing vision on developmentalism and population control, as one deputy put it simply "No country can develop if it reduces its population."65

• 66 CSTD, Term 4, Vol. 26, Meeting 57 March 19, 1965, pp. 173–75.

49One of the main attacks of the pronatalists on the law was on moral grounds, fearing that the lifting of the ban on contraception would lead to the removal of the moral barrier and encourage immoral relations.66 These claims were rejected by the government in a humiliating manner and the petitioners were accused of having no faith in the moral virtues of Turkish women.

• 67 Robert J. Lapham and W. Parker Mauldin, “Family Planning Program Effort and Birthrate Decline in De (...)

51On April 1, 1965, the Family Planning Law was passed by a vote of 71 to 44. The antinatalist bloc consisted of the statist CHP and the other deputies loyal to the military regime, while the pronatalists were clearly the deputies from AP. This political opposition not only delayed the legalization process but also sabotaged the implementation of the policy, which was measured as one of the weakest among the twenty developing countries that applied population control.67