Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy Canan Arıtman, who submitted the motion, said statistics gathered from police records and reports of sexual crimes committed against children were only the tip of the iceberg. She said online sexual exploitation of children has also been spreading, with pornographic material involving children being exchanged more frequently across the country. She stressed that there are 27 million young people in Turkey and that this trend of sexual abuse requires the immediate attention of Parliament. Drawing on statistics she gathered working with experts and civil society groups, Arıtman says 4 percent of all children in Turkey are subject to sexual abuse, with 70 percent of the victims being younger than 10. “Contrary to popular belief, boys are subject to sexual abuse as frequently as girls. In reported cases of children subject to commercial sexual exploitation, 77 percent of the children came from broken homes. Twenty-three percent lived with their parents, but in those homes domestic violence was common. The biggest risk faced by children who run away and live on the street is sexual exploitation. Children kidnapped from southeastern provinces are forced into prostitution here. Today, it is impossible to say for certain how many children in Turkey are being subjected to commercial sexual exploitation, but many say official information is off by at least 85 percent.”
7,000 sexually abused every year
How urgently does Turkey really need to act to protect its children? Oğuz Polat, a psychiatrist at Marmara University School of Medicine who also works as the coordinator for the Citizens Movement for Children’s Rights, says Turkey is faring poorly in that regard.
According to figures provided by the state Social Services and Child Protection Agency (SHÇEK), 2,678 -- 18 percent -- of the 14,398 children currently living in SHÇEK homes have been subject to physical or sexual abuse by their parents. “The number of children pushed into crime has been rising by 5 to 10 percent annually. On average, 125,000 children appear before the courts each year. Thirty-four percent of children below the age of 6 are living in poverty across the country; and that figure is around 40 percent in rural areas. Although we have good legislation on child rights, most of it is not being applied as it should be,” Polat said. He also noted that about 37 percent of Turkey’s street children had run away from homes in the East and Southeast, the most impoverished regions of the country.
Noting that according to Justice Ministry figures, 7,000 children are subject to sexual harassment and rape annually, Polat noted that the frequency of incest incidents and sexual crimes against children by members of their families have been consistently increasing. In 2000, 7 percent of the children placed in SHÇEK homes were there as a result of sexual abuse at home, but that percentage has risen to 15 percent over the past few years.
The unofficial figures are frightening. According to a study conducted by the Association for the Rehabilitation of Children and their Protection from Abuse (ÇİKORED), 58 percent of all girls and 42 percent of all boys whose mothers have been accepted by a women’s shelter in the country have also been subject to sexual abuse at home. Nearly all of the women who have taken refuge from domestic violence at these shelters, 92 percent, beat their own children regularly, ÇİKORED’s study in women’s shelters found.
According to research Polat conducted himself, the frequency of cases of sexual abuse and exploitation is highest in the cities of İstanbul, Diyarbakır and Bursa. Children trafficked from countries such as Ukraine, Moldova and Russia, as well as southeastern Turkey, are forced into prostitution in İstanbul. He says forced marriages of young girls to older men in return for money remains a persistent and traditional sexual crime against children in Diyarbakır.
An estimated 88,313 children in Turkey live on the streets, Polat said, adding that the country has the fourth-highest rate of underage substance abuse in the world.
Child pornography increasing
Turkey also has to take measures against a growing body of online child pornography, according to Sevil Atasoy, Director of the Forensic Medicine Institute at İstanbul University. She said one out of every five children surfing the Internet around the world has been contacted by a pedophile.
“I have been working for years to bring this issue to the public’s attention. Any increase in sexual offenses against children is to be expected. This is because Turkey has not been willing to face the sad truth that sexual interest in children is growing. The interrogation skills of the security forces have developed. As cooperation with international security forces has increased, we have come to see that there are too many child victims. Turkey has long been suffering from this problem of the sexual abuse of children; it is not a new issue. Because the police have become more skillful in interrogation, this problem can now be uncovered. Also, social awareness of the issue has increased. Actually, there has not been a surge in these cases. We do not have the data that would justify positing such a surge. This is because we have never kept reliable statistics about this issue. We know that these cases tend to be kept secret by families. Many cases are kept secret in this way,” she said.
Associate Professor Kültegin Ögel, chairman of the Health Anew Association (YENİDEN), argued that despite the fact that there have not been reliable records of cases of sexual abuse of children in the past, it is clear that there has been a considerable increase in these cases over the last decade.
Time to face the truth
Associate Professor Figen Şahin, chairwoman of the Association for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect and director of the Child Protection Center at Gazi University, spoke to Today’s Zaman, claiming that about 35 percent of the children in Turkey suffer from physical abuse and that 30 percent are victims of sexual abuse.
“There are no reliable statistics about the sexual abuse of children in Turkey. There have been several studies, though. Some of them suggest that 4 percent of children are victims of incest in the country while some others have found this number to be as high as 18 percent. However, these figures are the tip of the iceberg. It has been found that 35 percent of the children in Turkey are subject to physical violence. Beating is used as a method of education. Although there are different interpretations of the data on sexual abuse, it is obvious that the molesters are primarily people trusted by the victims. About 50 percent of the molesters come from among the relatives and close circles of the children’s families. In general, molestation is not done by force, but through deception,” she said.
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