Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reiterated his call on married couples to help the economy by having more than one child, calling birth control an act of “treason” aimed at weakening Turkey.

“We need a qualified population. We will never ignore this. If we want this nation to go beyond the level of contemporary civilization, this nation needs to be strong. In economy, there is a rule: young means dynamic,” Erdoğan said at a wedding ceremony on Sunday evening. “They carried out a treasonous act that is birth control, and they attempted to render us extinct.”

Erdoğan has long called on married couples to have at least three children, saying this is necessary to maintain economic growth.