Zehra Doğan/JINHA

AMED – With recent child sexual abuse cases on the agenda in Turkey, lawyer Reyhan Yalçındağ says the AKP government encourages the sexual abuse of children at every level of life—from the courts to state facilities.

Despite its signature on the UN's Convention on the Rights of the Child, Turkey has recently increasingly implemented policies of encouraging sexual violence against children. In several recent legal cases, judges have ruled that there was "consent" in the sexual abuse of children. Women's groups have taken to the street to protest the state's stomach-turning logic, but similar rulings are piling up.

"The first 'consent' case in Turkey was the N.Ç. case in Mardin [province]," said Reyhan. The Mardin case, which started in 2002, finally ended in 2011 with the judge's decision that 13-year-old N.Ç. had 'consented' to sexual relations with several adult men. Since then, Reyhan says, she has watched as this definition of consent spreads to a number of other cases in provinces across Turkey.

In the recent Bingöl case, a 15-year-old girl testified that eight soldiers on a local base had raped her multiple times. She said in her testimony, "I was scared of them and whenever they called, I went so they wouldn't kill me. They had weapons in their belts." In spite of this, the state ruled that there was consent, saying that "if the child did not want to have relations, she would have screamed or told her family." The case ended with acquittal for two of the soldiers and sentences of less than two years for the rest.

"Not giving consent, in the eyes of the state, would probably have to mean being forced into a gunnysack and raped," said Rehyan. Several high-profile child rapists and molesters are currently walking free in Turkey, she noted. A Diyarbakır teacher who harassed his female students is still in the classroom today. In the case of an Ankara man who raped his own daughter, the victim (impregnated by her father) is still living in his home with the full knowledge of the court.

Reyhan says the abuse only continues when children turn to state institutions allegedly designed to help them. It emerged in April that at a child protection facility in the province of Elazığ, staff members had for years been sexually abusing children who were in rehabilitation after their father killed their mother.

Recently, Turkey has given a contract to the charity Deniz Feneri (Lighthouse) to run such child protection homes in the country. The charity is known for being convicted of misuse of charity funds in German courts in 2008. "As if this much harassment and rape against children in this country was not enough, the state has transferred the care of children to a group known in Europe as thieves," said Reyhan.

"This is the reality of the AKP," said Reyhan. "So let no one say that we live in a democratic country."

(fk/cm)