Ursula von der Leyen, the first woman President of the European Commission, delivers a speech at the European Parliament (Wikimedia Commons)

A meeting between European Union officials and the Turkish government resulted in a scandal on April 6. President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and President of the European Council Charles Michel met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the Presidential Palace in Ankara. In a breach of diplomatic protocol dubbed “Sofagate,” Michel and Erdoğan sat in chairs in the center of the room, while von der Leyen was relegated to a sofa on the side.

In a viral video, an exasperated von der Leyen can be heard saying, “Umm…” as she was awkwardly left standing when Michel and Erdoğan took the only two seats in the front of the room. The video led to an international outcry. Critics denounced the seating arrangement as misogynistic, with von der Leyen put in a less-prominent, subordinate position despite her equal rank to Michel. The incident appeared to be a deliberate move on Erdoğan’s part, although Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu claimed that the seating arrangement followed “the demands and suggestions of the EU.”

“And no, it wasn’t a coincidence it was deliberate. Why was @eucopresident silent?,” reads in t’ Veld’s tweet, accompanied by a photo comparison of past meetings. (Twitter)

A Dutch Member of the European Parliament, Sophie in t’ Veld, tweeted a comparison of a past meeting with former Presidents of the European Commission and Council with Erdoğan where they were all sitting next to one another in the front of the room. The only difference is that in the previous meeting, all three of them were men. In an op-ed in Politico, t’ Veld argued that the incident “is a blow to women and girls worldwide.”

As the first woman to be President of the European Commission, von der Leyen is one of the most powerful women in recent European history. A group of women’s rights organizations, including the Millennia2025 Women and Innovation Foundation and the International Law League of Women, have accused Michel of being sexist for reflexively occupying the open chair without even considering von der Leyen, his hierarchical equal. The coalition authored a petition calling for Michel to resign. Michel rejected these demands—instead, he placed the blame on Erdoğan and emphasized his past advocacy for gender equality. However, he did concede that “the arrangement of the seats was humiliating and that is very regrettable.”

The Sofagate spectacle has overshadowed much of what was discussed in the meeting. Ironically, or perhaps intentionally, the two presidents originally met with Erdoğan to urge him to protect women’s rights in Turkey. On March 19, Erdoğan announced that Turkey would be withdrawing from the Council of Europe’s Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, better known as the Istanbul Convention. The Istanbul Convention is a human rights treaty that aims to end violence against women and discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation through legislation and education. It was signed by 45 European countries in 2011.

Erdoğan explained his decision to withdraw from the treaty by claiming that it was “hijacked by a group of people attempting to normalize homosexuality—which is incompatible with Turkey’s social and family values.” Erdoğan decided to withdraw from the treaty despite high recorded rates of violence against Turkish women in 2020.

Critics have lamented that the Sofagate spectacle humiliated the EU and significantly weakened their ability to push back against a wave of misogynistic, homophobic, and anti-democratic laws in Eastern Europe. Similar to Turkey, Poland and Hungary have recently ratified a raft of legislation that roll back women’s and LGBTQ+ rights. In 2020, Poland implemented so-called “LGBT-free zones” and banned nearly all forms of abortion. The EU condemned the actions and attempted to restrict funding to “LGBT-free” Polish towns, but the moves have had minimal impact on a Polish government committed to the rollback of civil rights.

In Hungary, the starkly conservative government of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán banned same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples. In a similar illiberal vein, the Hungarian government has also crippled its democratic institutions, attacking the independence of its judiciary and the freedom of its press. In February, the ruling party Fidesz forcibly removed from the air its biggest opposition radio station, the liberal Klubrádió. Judy Dempsey, a journalist at the think tank Carnegie Europe, asserted that “the EU's tepid response to Viktor Orban's chipping away of democratic institutions in Hungary is complacency at the highest level.”

The EU has been unable to take any effective measures that pressure Turkey, Poland, and Hungary to halt their march towards bigotry and autocracy. The events in Ankara further threaten any semblance of strength and bargaining power that the EU has. Sofagate may seem like a trivial diplomatic snafu, but in reality, it reveals the EU’s weak position in the struggle against illiberal and hateful ideology.