JINHA

ANKARA – A Turkish court in Ankara found a Turkish man guilty of assault against his wife—and found the woman herself guilty of the exact same crime because the hand her husband hit her with was swollen.

According to journalist Gökçer Tahincioğlu, an Ankara woman fled to a neighbor's house with her child in July to escape hear husband's abuse, which had gone on for years. After locking the doors behind her, she called the police. The man and woman were sent for forensic medical evaluation. Doctors recorded an edema in her head related to trauma and lesions forming in her arms. The man, displaying a scratch on his chest and a swelling in the wrist he had used to hit the woman, claimed to police that his wife had abused him.

The woman was placed in a shelter, but because her husband still had the right to see the child, occasionally had to see him. At these meetings, he repeatedly abused her and threatened her. Because the man threatened her at the woman's shelter, the woman returned to her family's home. The woman was now struggling not just with her husband's threat to kill her, but her family members' determination to "marry her off" again.

The Ankara state prosecutor then filed charges on assault—not just against the abusive husband, but against the woman. The court saw no need to collect any evidence other than the man's testimony. The decision said that there had been a "domestic dispute" in the family. The court fined both parties 3,000 lira ($1,125).

During this period, the woman went to the police again, as her husband was still hitting her. She was relocated to the women's shelter again. Sources believe she has now been sent to a woman's shelter in another city due to the threats against her.

(gc/fk/cm)