It was the unknown seen around the world and can now have serious consequences. After the President of the European Council left his colleague without a seat during a meeting with the Turkish President, a petition has been created urging him to resign.
It began when European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. During the meeting, Michel and Erdoğan took the only two chairs available, leaving von der Leyen standing and then finding a seat elsewhere, after looking upset.
The video of the incident quickly went viral, if not just for her discomfort, for her apparent sexism. She has since been christened “Sofagate,” but a group of dozens of women activists and leaders say she has serious implications.
In a letter to Michel, the women’s group denounces a mistake against democracy, the European Union and women’s rights, and calls for Michel’s resignation.
The letter lists the three crucial mistakes made by Michel 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 another seat during a three-person meeting.
“And you, Mr. Michel, ran to that seat, almost stretched so much that you wanted to occupy it,” the letter says. “In the face of Mrs von der Leyen’s dismay, you did not tremble, you wanted to be sitting at Mr Erdoğan’s right.”
The group says Michel may have invited the woman to sit or may have stood with her. “You remained silent,” they said.
Although Mrs von der Leyen could have stood up or left, “she preferred not to increase the incident” and sat on a nearby sofa, “no matter how angry she was,” the letter explained.
“The dictator, meanwhile, watched your party and scored his points,” the group said, referring to Erdoğan. “You gave him that unhealthy pleasure by falling so hard into his trap.”
The second reason Michel was wrong, the group said, was that his “thoughtless attitude” was detrimental to all citizens of the European Union, “giving the dictator an image of internal conflict, weak intelligence.” urgency and reaction on the part of the President of his Council, at a time when the question of Turkey’s entry into Europe constitutes a serious and unresolved debate. “
Michel complained, instead of admitting that he was wrong and that he fell in love with the “trap” set by the Turkish president, the group described it as “pathetic”.
“If #sexism and #misogyny can still exist today it is because witnesses remain silent or because they benefit from this disqualification of women,” the leader says.
Finally, Erdogan had announced in March that Turkey was “leaving the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating All Violence against Women and Domestic Violence,” the group said.
“By ostensibly assuming leadership as a man over a woman who is your political equality, offer reinforcement to the dictator about the infatuation he wants to impose on women and girls in Turkey, fifteen days after the authoritarian decision he took to rape gender equality, implicitly authorizing all violence against women and children in Turkey, ”the group wrote.
After the incident, Michel said he was “saddened by any suggestion that he would have been indifferent to the protocol’s misstep with regard to Ursula,” BBC News reports. He said the impression that he was “indifferent” to the situation was incorrect and that nothing could have been further from the truth, according to BBC News.
In the letter, the group criticized Michel’s apologies and launched a petition for his resignation, which has been signed by more than 10,000 people as of Tuesday.
Leaders of women’s groups such as the Millennia2025 Women and Innovation Foundation and the International Law League of Women, participated in the letter, which will be sent to Michel on Tuesday. The group also sends a copy to von der Leyen, who is the first woman president of the European Commission.
Prior to writing the letter, several women leaders publicly addressed “Sofagate”, criticizing Michel and Erdoğan’s handling of the situation. Sophie in ‘t Veld, a Dutch MEP, said she was a slight “deliberate” “questioning the equal treatment” of von der Leyen, adding that it was no coincidence that she was the only woman at the meeting. , he tweeted.
Iratxe García Pérez, leader of the Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament, also shared the video of “Sofagate” on Twitter, writing: “First they withdraw from the Istanbul Convention and now leave the President of the European Commission without a seat in an official visit. #WomensRights. “
In an interview with German newspaper Handelsblat last week, Michel said that if possible, he would step back and resolve the situation, Reuters reports. “I make no secret because I didn’t sleep well at night because the scenes keep playing in my head,” Michel said.
Turkey said that at the request of the EU the room was installed in this way. However, Dominique Marro, head of protocol at the EU Council, said his team did not have access to the room where the incident took place before the meeting, the Associated Press reports.
“If the tete-a-tete room had been visited, we should have suggested to our hosts that, out of courtesy, they replace the sofa with two armchairs for the President of the Commission,” Marro wrote in a note that has been made public by the Council of the EU, according to the PA.