It was a blockage seen all over the world – and now it can have serious consequences. After the President of the European Council left his female colleague without a seat during a meeting with the Turkish President, a petition was 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 to stand, then find a seat elsewhere – after seeming dissatisfied.
The video of the incident quickly went viral – if not just for clumsiness, for his apparent sexism. It has since been dubbed “Sofagate”, but a group of dozens of women activist groups and leaders say it has serious implications.
In a letter to Michel, the women’s group denounces the chair as an error 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 his 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, rushed to this chair, almost lying so hard that you wanted to occupy it,” the letter reads. “Faced with Mrs von der Leyen’s dismay, you did not start, you wanted to be seated to Mr Erdoğan’s right.”
The group says Michel could have invited the woman to stay or stood with her. “You kept quiet,” they said.
While Mrs von der Leyen could have stayed or left, “she preferred not to escalate the incident” and sat down on a nearby couch, “no matter how angry she was,” the letter explained.
“Meanwhile, the dictator watched your game and scored points,” the group said, referring to Erdoğan. “You gave him this unhealthy pleasure by falling so hard into his trap.”
The second reason Michel was wrong, the group said, was that “his reckless attitude” was to the detriment of all European Union citizens, “giving the dictator an image of internal conflict, weak intelligence and the reaction of his president.” , at a time when the issue of Turkey’s entry into 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 “trap” set by the Turkish president, Michel complained.
“If #sexism and #misogyny can still exist today, it is because the witnesses remain silent or because they take advantage of this disqualification of women,” the leader reads.
Finally, Erdoğan 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 taking over the leadership of a woman who is your equal politician, you offer the dictator reinforcement of the crushing he wants to impose on women and girls in Turkey, fifteen days after his authoritarian decision to violate gender equality, implicitly authorizing any violence against women and children in Turkey, “the group wrote.
Following the incident, Michel said he was “saddened by any suggestion that I would have been indifferent to the protocol’s wrong step on Ursula”, BBC News reports. He said the impression that he was “indifferent” to the situation was incorrect and that nothing could be further from the truth, according to BBC News.
In the letter, the group criticized Michel’s apology and began a petition for his resignation, which was signed by more than 10,000 people since Tuesday.
Leaders of women’s groups, such as the Millennia2025 Foundation for Women and Innovation and the International Women’s Law League, 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.
Before the letter was written, several women leaders publicly addressed ‘Sofagate’, criticizing the way Michel and Erdoğan approached the situation. Sophie in ‘t Veld, a Dutch MEP, said it was a slight “deliberate” that “questioned von der Leyen’s equal treatment”, adding that it was no coincidence that it was the only meeting, she wrote on Twitter.
Iratxe García Pérez, the leader of the Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament, also shared the video “Sofagate” on Twitter, writing: “First they withdraw from the Istanbul Convention and now leave the President of the European Commission without a place in an official visit. Shy. #Women’s rights. “
In an interview with the German newspaper Handelsblat last week, Michel said that, if possible, he will return and remedy the situation, Reuters reports. “I can’t hide the fact that I haven’t slept well at night since then, because the scenes continue to play in my head,” Michel said.
Turkey said that, at the request of the EU, the room was arranged in this way. However, EU Council Protocol Chief Dominique Marro said his team did not have access to the room where the incident took place before the meeting, the Associated Press reported.
“If the head-to-head room had been visited, we should have suggested to our hosts that, out of courtesy, they replace the two-seater sofa for the President of the Commission,” Marro wrote in a note made public by The EU Council, according to the PA.