More determined efforts needed to find missing children

Last year, this number was 528, and in the year 2007, 210 children went missing. Despite this frightening increase in the number of missing children, up until now, aside from a report from the Prime Ministry's Human Rights Presidency, there have been no reforms on the subject. After recent heartrending stories about missing children in the media, the subject is just now coming to the nation's agenda.

The most recent story centered on three children who disappeared from Kayseri's Talas district on Sept. 21, the second day of Eid al-Fitr, after leaving home to collect candy. Despite intensive searches by the security forces and the intervention of President Abdullah Gül, the 6, 8 and 11-year-old children still have not been found.

Experts note that in missing children cases, 75 to 80 percent of lost children are found in the first 15 days, but the rest generally are not found.

In some Western countries, for example in Germany, there are special procedures for missing children: Within 20 minutes of the first call to police about a missing child, SMS messages are sent to all mobile phones in the area of the disappearance. Pictures of the child are immediately posted on billboards. In Turkey, conversely, there is neither a clear action plan for finding missing children nor any specific regulations.

“Every missing child is another case, all of them have their own peculiarities, and police have to use different methods to find them,” a high-ranking police officer told Sunday's Zaman.

Here in Turkey, the family is responsible for printing out and paying for posters about missing children, such as in the case of Leyla Baykuşak, 8 years old and missing since September. She went to buy bread at a shop near her home in Diyarbakır but never returned. The family printed out 4,000 pictures of her and distributed them throughout the city.

There are widespread rumors that children are being kidnapped by the organ mafia. But the same police department source said that during all his years working on the force he has never seen even one child whose organs were stolen. “For example, in Ankara there are 144 missing children, but to us only a couple of them have disappeared under suspicious circumstances,” he said. According to him, suspicious circumstances include a life-threatening situation, kidnapping or a disappearance suspected to be at the hands of criminals using the children for sex-related crimes.  

“It does not mean that we are not searching for these children, but I am sure most of them are physically healthy and somewhere in Turkey,” the same source said and added that most of those children are from the orphanages.

But Professor Betül Ulukol, the chairperson of the child protection unit of the Ankara University medical faculty, is not that sure about the whereabouts of these missing children.

“We don't have any data or knowledge about these children, how many of them were kidnapped, if they are in the hands of the organ mafia or any other gang, and this is exactly the problem, we don't have any idea what we face, we cannot even describe the situation,” she told Sunday's Zaman.

Öztürk Türkdoğan, chairman of the Human Rights Association (İHD), said that to live in a country in which more than 1,000 children are missing in less than one year, and where the state has no idea as to their whereabouts is a real concern for every citizen.

“The state's security apparatus is so busy about run-after-it actions, which are described as crimes against state. All their efforts are concentrated on those matters, and the needs of the citizens are neglected,” he told Sunday's Zaman.

The Prime Ministry Human Rights Presidency is one of the institutions which is trying to not neglect the subject. They prepared a report about missing children in Turkey last year, according to which the largest number of missing children are from the big cities which see heavy migration. The provinces which have the highest number of missing children are İstanbul, Balıkesir, Bursa, Ankara and Şanlıurfa.

Ulukol argues that there are three types of child disappearances. The first group is the ones who frequently run away from home. “Usually the police find them and deliver them to their families but they run away again. After awhile, the families don't even notify the authorities,” she said. Ulukol underlined that these children make a living on the street and sometimes get easy money. “The police once told me that the kids who sell handkerchiefs on the streets are making around TL 2,000 [monthly], so they are not willing to return home; some special measures have to be taken for them. They should be directed to special courses to abandon their habits,” she underlined.

The second group, according to Ulukol, is children who are not sure about the reaction of their families to certain behaviors, such as a bad school report or a bad choice of friends. In this category, there are also children who think that to love a child means to buy everything or to say yes to every one of their demands. “Those kinds of children are searching for love at outside and running away from home,” Ulukol said.

The third group is children who are kidnapped and used for criminal activities, but information about this is extremely limited.

The Prime Ministry's Human Rights Presidency, in its report on missing children, cited “early marriage” as the primary reason for disappearances, especially for girls.

The second reason according to the report is poverty: “Severe discord, unemployment, poverty, violence and a lack of education first affects children, and when these children can find ways to take care of themselves, they look for ways to save themselves from a boring family ambience, violence, degrading behavior and poverty,” the report notes.

 The Prime Ministry suggests that in order to prevent the disappearance of children there should be several steps taken at different levels. At the individual level, psychologists should help to develop conflict resolution and problem solving skills; awareness-increasing studies should be performed, especially in low socioeconomic level regions, in order to avoid early marriages, According to the Prime Ministry, family support programs should be applied, and economic, socio-cultural and psychological support programs should be developed and implemented especially in regions that are occupied by migrant and indigent families. The report also emphasizes the necessity of ensuring camera surveillance and security measures in places frequently occupied by children, in addition to other security measures.