He loves you, he beats you. Family violence in Turkey in HRW report
He loves you, he beats you. Family violence in Turkey in HRW report
Human Rights Watch said Turkey has a flawed family violence protection system. This flawed system according to the report leaves women unprotected around the country. Domestic abuse is a plague in Turkey as many associations have underlined. The report, "'He Loves You, He Beats You': Family Violence in Turkey and Access to Protection", pointed out that life-saving protections, including court-issued protection orders and emergency shelters, are not available for many abuse victims because of gaps in the law and enforcement failures.
In 58 pages the report documents brutal and long-lasting violence against women and girls by husbands, partners, and family members and the survivors' struggle to seek protection.
Turkey has strong protection laws, setting out requirements for shelters for abused women and protection orders. However, gaps in the law and implementation failures by police, prosecutors, judges, and other officials make the protection system unpredictable at best, and at times downright dangerous.
"With strong laws in place, it is inexcusable that Turkish authorities are depriving family violence victims of basic protections," said Gauri van Gulik, women's rights advocate and researcher at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. "Turkey has gone through exemplary reform on women's human rights, but police, prosecutors, judges, and social workers need to make the system exemplary in practice, not just on paper."
The report included interviews with women and girls, from 14 to 65, who tell of their being raped; stabbed; kicked in the abdomen when pregnant; beaten with hammers, sticks, branches, and hoses to the point of broken bones and fractured skulls; locked up with dogs or other animals; starved; shot with a stun gun; injected with poison; pushed off a roof; and subjected to severe psychological violence. The violence occurred in all areas where researchers conducted interviews, and across income and education levels.
Some 42 percent of women over age 15 in Turkey and 47 percent of rural women have experienced physical or sexual violence at the hands of a husband or partner at some point in their lives, according to a 2009 survey conducted by a leading Turkish university.
The report is based on interviews with, and the case files of, 40 women in Van, Istanbul, Trabzon, Ankara, Izmir, and Diyarbakýr, and dozens of interviews with lawyers, women's organizations, social workers, government officials, and other experts.
This report comes as the Council of Europe is about to adopt a regional convention on violence against women and domestic violence. Turkey played an important role in drafting the convention as the current Chair of the Committee of Ministers, and the convention is scheduled to be signed at a summit in Istanbul on May 11, 2011.
Below one of the testimonies included in the report:
Aslý I. is a 21-year-old Kurdish woman from a village close to Van. Aslý confronted violence from the moment she married and moved in with her in-laws in 2009. All 10 people in the household abused her in some way. When she had severe stomach pains, the family kept her captive and her father-in-law injected something into her arm that severely damaged her health. The family also forced her to carry stones and wood all day for a house they were building. Aslý's father-in-law hit her "all the time" with a water pipe, a hose, and a hammer.He broke Aslý's nose and arm, and barred her from going to a nearby hospital. He regularly locked her up in the animal house and finally told her, "I didn't just get you here for my son, but also for my pleasure." He then raped her.
She cannot read or write and speaks little Turkish, but she got help from a women's group once she was finally out of the house. The police told the father-in-law to stay away from her, but did not arrest him. They advised Aslý to seek a protection order from the prosecutor, which she did in May 2010. However, as Aslý told us: "I went to the prosecutor, but never heard back from them, and he [the father-in-law] keeps coming to our house. Will he kill me or one of my brothers before I can get help?"
Zeynep B. In Izmir, Zeynep B. had a protection order against her husband, who regularly beat and psychologically abused her. At the end of 2009, while the order was in force, her husband barged into her house, cut off her electricity, and threatened her with a knife. She fled and he chased her, but she managed to get to the police. They told her, "Go home, we will deal with it." On her way home she was stabbed six times by her husband. She barely survived.
(The report can be downloaded at http://www.hrw.org/node/98418)
In 58 pages the report documents brutal and long-lasting violence against women and girls by husbands, partners, and family members and the survivors' struggle to seek protection.
Turkey has strong protection laws, setting out requirements for shelters for abused women and protection orders. However, gaps in the law and implementation failures by police, prosecutors, judges, and other officials make the protection system unpredictable at best, and at times downright dangerous.
"With strong laws in place, it is inexcusable that Turkish authorities are depriving family violence victims of basic protections," said Gauri van Gulik, women's rights advocate and researcher at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. "Turkey has gone through exemplary reform on women's human rights, but police, prosecutors, judges, and social workers need to make the system exemplary in practice, not just on paper."
The report included interviews with women and girls, from 14 to 65, who tell of their being raped; stabbed; kicked in the abdomen when pregnant; beaten with hammers, sticks, branches, and hoses to the point of broken bones and fractured skulls; locked up with dogs or other animals; starved; shot with a stun gun; injected with poison; pushed off a roof; and subjected to severe psychological violence. The violence occurred in all areas where researchers conducted interviews, and across income and education levels.
Some 42 percent of women over age 15 in Turkey and 47 percent of rural women have experienced physical or sexual violence at the hands of a husband or partner at some point in their lives, according to a 2009 survey conducted by a leading Turkish university.
The report is based on interviews with, and the case files of, 40 women in Van, Istanbul, Trabzon, Ankara, Izmir, and Diyarbakýr, and dozens of interviews with lawyers, women's organizations, social workers, government officials, and other experts.
This report comes as the Council of Europe is about to adopt a regional convention on violence against women and domestic violence. Turkey played an important role in drafting the convention as the current Chair of the Committee of Ministers, and the convention is scheduled to be signed at a summit in Istanbul on May 11, 2011.
Below one of the testimonies included in the report:
Aslý I. is a 21-year-old Kurdish woman from a village close to Van. Aslý confronted violence from the moment she married and moved in with her in-laws in 2009. All 10 people in the household abused her in some way. When she had severe stomach pains, the family kept her captive and her father-in-law injected something into her arm that severely damaged her health. The family also forced her to carry stones and wood all day for a house they were building. Aslý's father-in-law hit her "all the time" with a water pipe, a hose, and a hammer.He broke Aslý's nose and arm, and barred her from going to a nearby hospital. He regularly locked her up in the animal house and finally told her, "I didn't just get you here for my son, but also for my pleasure." He then raped her.
She cannot read or write and speaks little Turkish, but she got help from a women's group once she was finally out of the house. The police told the father-in-law to stay away from her, but did not arrest him. They advised Aslý to seek a protection order from the prosecutor, which she did in May 2010. However, as Aslý told us: "I went to the prosecutor, but never heard back from them, and he [the father-in-law] keeps coming to our house. Will he kill me or one of my brothers before I can get help?"
Zeynep B. In Izmir, Zeynep B. had a protection order against her husband, who regularly beat and psychologically abused her. At the end of 2009, while the order was in force, her husband barged into her house, cut off her electricity, and threatened her with a knife. She fled and he chased her, but she managed to get to the police. They told her, "Go home, we will deal with it." On her way home she was stabbed six times by her husband. She barely survived.
(The report can be downloaded at http://www.hrw.org/node/98418)
