The issue came up in Parliament for the first time on Feb. 19, when Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) deputy Mehmet Akif Paksoy submitted a question to then-State Minister Nimet Çubukçu, who was in charge of the Social Services and Child Protection Agency (SHÇEK), inquiring about allegations that Turkish children were systematically adopted by Christian families in Germany. Çubukçu, who has since been made the education minister, in her reply stated that her ministry had investigated the allegations, adding that her ministry had found no violation of the International Social Service (ISS) agency on the part of Germany despite a number of recent complaints on the topic. However, she said a new unit titled the Family Research Council was set up under her ministry to investigate similar claims in Germany as well as other countries in Europe.
The Family Research Council has only recently finished its work on the adoption status of Turkish citizens in various European countries. With this new development, MHP deputies brought up the issue in Parliament again. MHP deputy Atilla Kaya submitted a question this time to Foreign Minister Davutoğlu.
In his response to the query, Davutoğlu said adoptions were not carried out on the basis of religion, maintaining that the only criterion in finding new homes was a good home and a healthy environment. The minister’s response stated that in Germany, children deemed to be under risk from their own families could be put in foster or adoptive homes by court order.
He said German authorities did not have definite records detailing the number of Turkish children so far adopted by German families. However, the ministry was able to learn from officials in Munich that the number of Turkish children taken into protective custody by the state this year was 40 there. He said, according to unofficial data, the number of Turkish children who were placed in state custody in the first quarter of 2009 was 93 in Berlin, where 300 to 400 children are placed in state custody annually.
Davutoğlu said a commission formed under the Prime Ministry’s Family and Social Research General Directorate had visited officials, civil society organizations and experts in Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt and Munich between March 18 and 29, noting that a report by this commission on the reasons why Turkish families in these areas lost custody of their children would be available in the next few weeks.
Similar claims that Turkish children from Muslim families are systematically being placed in non-Muslim homes have also been raised in other countries such as Austria, Belgium, Holland, Denmark and France. The Prime Ministry’s Family and Social Research General Directorate is also monitoring adoptive patterns in these countries. Concerning its work conducted in Germany, the directorate has concluded that none of the children who have been placed in new homes have been forcefully removed from their families to be given to Christian families and that all the children placed with foster or adoptive parents come from homes where parents are unable to take care of children due to economic or psychological problems.
