The figure that impressed me was an estimate that domestic violence costs British society approximately 23 billion pounds a year. This is roughly the equivalent of YTL 1,000 per person. Of the total burden, 3 billion pounds fall on the public services or, in other words, on tax payers. Turkey does not yet have an Equality Commission, although one has been promised, and data on domestic violence so far consists largely in a collection of small scale studies. There are plans to establish a national database, with EU financial support, but until results are known we have to rely on the limited data available. What statistics already show, though, is a high incidence of domestic violence. Studies like the Population and Health Survey carried out in 2003 by Hacettepe University also found that up to 40 percent of women accepted marital abuse and an even higher percentage of teenage girls thought it was simply part of married life.
Britain is not the only country that has attempted to put a cost on domestic abuse. The Council of Europe found the widespread incidence of abuse against women sufficiently worrying to launch a major campaign against it in 2002. In a review of progress published last year, the cost assessments of other countries were mentioned. Switzerland, for instance, put the cost at 35 euros per capita; Finland at 27 euros. To the direct financial expenditure, you have to add the indirect, often intangible, emotional, physical and psychological burden carried by women and children, who live in constant fear in the place where they should feel the safest.
Putting a price on domestic violence is important. Until very recently, there was a tendency to view it as a “women’s issue” and therefore to dismiss it as the concern of a few “agitated feminists”. Once you start examining what domestic violence really costs in terms of percentage of GDP -- sick days off work, police and court time, hospital beds, medical treatment for physical or psychological wounds that often take a long time to heal, shelters and social workers, financial benefits for victims who have had to leave their homes -- the real impact becomes clear to all.
In Turkey, opinion is shifting and the media is devoting far more column space these days to family violence, which scars children as well as women. But the notion that the family is sacred and what goes on within it is private remains strong despite the fact that, in reality, the costs of violence is borne by the entire society.
What all these studies show is that no country has yet successfully managed to put an end to domestic violence. Turkey, which is only just beginning to address the issue in a meaningful way, can benefit from the experience of other countries. The first step is to ensure that adequate structures are in place to protect victims. With only 30 shelters, Turkey is still far below the optimum ratio of one shelter place for every 7,500 residents recommended by then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in a report released last October. But to limit the costs to society in the future, efforts should also be deployed to educate children as soon as they start primary school, and to involve boys and men at every stage. Above all, it is important to stop thinking of domestic violence as a “women’s issue”: it is in fact a costly social scourge that affects us all.
