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Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants to pass a law that allows child sexual abuse.
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imago / ZUMA Press
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He tried something similar four years ago, at that time the move was put on hold after massive protests.
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Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
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Now the chances seem good that the advance will become law. Erdogan’s AKP and allies have a clear majority in parliament.
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UNICEF
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Child marriages are already very common in Turkey. Especially in the rural, conservative-religious areas.
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Turkey wants to legalize child sexual abuse. This provides for a bill that the ruling AKP party of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (65) wants to present to the parliament in Ankara.
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Erdogan campaigns for the “reform”. If she is accepted, anyone who sexually abuses or rapes a minor (12 years and older) will be punished, provided he marries the victim. The only catch for the tormentor: The marriage must be concluded “by mutual agreement”.
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Child marriages are the order of the day
Turkish media report that Erdogan should be at the forefront of the new law. The AKP says that the initiative should “bring families together”. In Turkey women can be married from the age of 17, in exceptional cases at 16.
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Especially in religious-conservative circles, which can mainly be found in the country, child marriages are also the order of the day, as various studies – including the United Nations – prove. It is also common among these populations that girls who have had premarital sex are forced to marry by their relatives in order to restore the so-called “family honor”. It is therefore unclear how “mutually acceptable” the clause propagated in advance in reality should actually be.
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Every fourth woman married before 18
In a report In 2018, opposition CHP MP Tekin Bingöl (64) stated that 26 percent of all Turkish women had married before the age of 18. How many of them were voluntarily entered was not quantifiable. And also two years ago, the state religious authority Diyanet published an opinion that girls were married at the age of nine and boys at the age of twelve.
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Adem Sözüer, head of the Department of Criminal and Criminal Procedure Law at the University of Istanbul, criticized in the Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet that the new bill would increase violence against women and children because it “legitimizes a mentality that women are objects that are one owns and exist for sexual satisfaction ».
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Already in 2016, the AKP tried to get a very similar advance through parliament. At that time there were nationwide protests, the attempt was stopped. As can now be seen, it was only put on hold. Even if large protest movements have already formed in Turkey again, the law could be factual in a few weeks. The AKP and its allies have a clear majority in the Turkish parliament. (VOF)
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