A marriage incident in Turkey about 17 years ago turned into a matter of public opinion in the country until it entered the Turkish parliament, where the deputy head of the parliamentary bloc of the Justice and Development Party in Turkey demanded an immediate investigation into the marriage incident that occurred in 2005 when a Turkish cleric agreed to marry his then 6-year-old daughter.
But today, Yusef Zia Gomushal, the father of the girl, who is now around 23, faces a prison sentence of at least 27 years, which is the same sentence her husband and mother will face, in case they are all convicted of child sexual assault, as everyone attended her marriage when she was an adult, at the age of 6 she then gave birth to her first and only child at the age of fourteen.
The authorities also arrested the husband and wife’s father
Although the complaint filed by Gumushal’s daughter against her father, mother and husband dates back to last October, her case was widely covered by the Turkish media for the first time since the beginning of this December, which contributed to the intervention urgent need by the authorities, as her father and husband were arrested soon after.
Judicial sources tell Al-Arabiya.net from Istanbul, where the trial is taking place, that “the Turkish judiciary has decided to start the first court hearing on the case of assault on a minor on January 30, instead of the session that should have been held on May 22.”
According to the same sources, the date of the trial sessions for the three defendants, who are the complainant’s father, husband and mother, was brought forward, following the great support that Ibn Gumushal has received from various parts of the country, especially the main parties in Parliament, such as the ruling party, the “Republican People” and the pro-Kurdish “Democratic Peoples” party and the “Democratic Peoples” party. Al-Khair, the nationalist party, is also known as the ‘Good Party’.
The spread of Gumushal’s daughter’s case in Turkish media forced the religious group led by her father to shut down its website and the group’s social media accounts. However, she later claimed that her site had been hacked.
Gumushal’s daughter has brought underage marriage back into the limelight in Turkey, especially after leaders of the country’s major parties expressed their solidarity with her, who questioned the number of cases of underage marriages that have not been talked about for time, citing Gumushal’s daughter, who touched his case after about 17 years of marriage.
And Kamal Kilicdaroglu, head of the “Republican People’s Party”, the main opposition party in Turkey, believed that this marriage incident was a “crime” and that “the perpetrators should receive the necessary punishment so that similar ones do not happen again later,” in a position commensurate with the statements of Meral Akeshnar, leader of the “Good” party. Who asked the security authorities not to release Gumushal’s daughter-in-law and her father.
Authorities arrested the complainant’s father and husband after her case was reported to the media
