The committee, which will investigate the problem and determine the measures needed, will comprise 16 members and work for three months under the auspices of Parliament. Addressing the deputies before the vote, Minister for Women and Children Selma Aliye Kavaf said a coordination protocol between her ministry and the justice and interior ministries will also be put into force to help overcome the problem. Police are currently searching for 1,657 missing children in Turkey.
According to Kavaf, these include children who voluntarily left their homes in addition to those who were abducted. She told Parliament during Wednesday’s session that in spite of the high number of missing children in the country, Turkey is now in a better position vis-à-vis the scale of the threat compared to much of the rest of the world but immediate steps still need to be taken to overcome the problem. Kavaf described the work of the committee being formed and the inter-ministry coordination protocol as progress.
Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) İzmir deputy Şenol Bal took the floor after Kavaf and highlighted the suffering of families of missing children. He further argued that street children should also be considered missing children and called for their problems to be addressed by the commission. Speaking on behalf of his group, Muş deputy Nuri Yaman from the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) said such children are struggling with drugs and are unprotected against violence and sexual abuse. Mehmet Sevigen, an İstanbul deputy from the Republican People’s Party (CHP), also spoke during the session and said the responsibility for those children falls on the shoulders of everyone including families, neighborhoods, institutions and the state.
