It was the insult seen around the world – and now it can have dire consequences. After the President of the European Council left his female colleague without a seat during a meeting with the Turkish president, a petition has been filed urging him to step down.
It started when European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. During the meeting, Michel and Erdoğan took over the only two available seats, leaving Von der Leyen standing and then sitting elsewhere – after looking unhappy about it.
Video of the incident quickly went viral – if not just because of the clumsiness, because of the apparent sexism. It has since been dubbed “Sofagate,” but a group of dozens of female activist groups and leaders say it has serious implications.
In a letter to Michel, the group of women calls the seat a mistake against democracy, the European Union and women’s rights – and they call on Michel to step down.
The letter lists the three crucial mistakes Michel made when he left von der Leyen standing during the meeting with Erdoğan.
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First, the group said, Michel and von der Leyen are on an equal diplomatic level, and Erdoğan “set a trap” by offering just one other seat at a three-person gathering.
“And you, Mr Michel, you rushed into this chair, lay almost so eagerly that you wanted to occupy it,” the letter reads. “Faced with Mrs. von der Leyen’s dismay, you didn’t flinch, you wanted to sit to Mr. Erdoğan’s right.”
The group says that Michel could have invited the woman to sit or stand next to her. “You were silent,” they said.
While Mrs. von der Leyen could have gotten up or gone, “she preferred not to magnify the incident” and sat on a bench nearby, “however very angry,” the letter explained.
“The dictator, meanwhile, watched your game and scored his points,” the group said, referring to Erdoğan. “You gave him this unhealthy pleasure by falling so badly into his trap.”
The second reason Michel was wrong, the group said, was that his “ thoughtlessness ” was detrimental to all citizens of the European Union, ” giving the dictator a picture of internal conflict, weak intelligence and reaction from the side. of the President of the European Union. his Council, at a time when the issue of Turkey’s accession to Europe is a serious and unresolved debate. “
The group called this ‘pathetic’ and instead of admitting that he was wrong and that he had fallen into the Turkish president’s ‘trap’, Michel complained.
“If #sexism and #misogyny can still exist, it is because witnesses are silent or because they are benefiting from this disqualification of women,” the leader read.
Finally, Erdoğan had announced in March that Turkey “was withdrawing from the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating all violence against women and domestic violence,” the group said.
“By ostensibly as a man taking charge of a woman who is your political equal, you are reinforcing the dictator for the infatuation he wants to impose on women and girls in Turkey, fifteen days after the authoritarian decision he took to violate gender equality , implicit consent for all violence against women and children in Turkey, ”the group wrote.
After the incident, Michel said he was “saddened by any suggestion that I was indifferent to the protocol divergence regarding Ursula,” reports BBC News. He said the impression that he was “indifferent” to the situation was false and that nothing could be further from the truth, according to BBC News.
In the letter, the group criticized Michel’s apologies and started a petition for his resignation, which has been signed by more than 10,000 people since Tuesday.
Leaders of women’s groups such as the Millennia2025 Women and Innovation Foundation and the International Law League of Women took part in the letter, which will be sent to Michel on Tuesday. The group also sends a copy to von der Leyen, the first female president of the European Commission.
Before the letter was written, several women leaders publicly addressed “Sofagate” and criticized Michel and Erdoğan’s approach to the situation. Sophie in ‘t Veld, a Dutch Member of the European Parliament, said it was a’ deliberate ‘disdain that casts doubt on Von der Leyen’s’ equal treatment’, adding that it was no coincidence that she was the only woman at the meeting, she tweeted.
Iratxe García Pérez, leader of the Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament, also shared the video ‘Sofagate’ on Twitter, writing: ‘First they are withdrawing from the Istambul convention and now they are leaving the President of the European Commission without a seat in an official visit. Shameful. #Female rights
In an interview with the German newspaper Handelsblat last week, Michel said that if it were possible, he would go back to resolve the situation, Reuters reports. “I don’t make it a secret that I didn’t sleep well at night because the scenes keep repeating in my head,” Michel said.
Turkey said it was at the request of the EU for the room to be furnished in this way. However, Dominique Marro, head of the EU Council, said his team did not have access to the area where the incident took place before the meeting, the Associated Press reports.
“If the room had been visited for the tete-a-tete, we should have suggested to our hosts that, as a courtesy, they replace the sofa with two armchairs for the President of the Commission,” Marro wrote in a note made public by the EU. Council, according to the AP.