BySCEME
“He Loves You, He Beats You”
Turkey’s weak family violence protection system leaves women unprotected against domestic abuse. Life-saving protections, including court-issued protection orders and emergency shelters, are not available for many abuse victims because of implementation failures.
There are brutal violence against women 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, and judges make the protection system dangerous.
According to a 2009 survey conducted by a Turkish university, 42 % of women over age 15 in Turkey and 47 % of rural women have experienced physical violence.
The law excludes certain groups of women altogether, such as divorced and unmarried women. Police, prosecutors, and judges in many cases neglect their duties. Many women said that police officers mocked them and sent them home to their abusers, rather than helping them get protection orders, and that prosecutors and judges were slow to act on protection order requests or demanded evidence not required by the law.
The extreme brutality that family members inflict on women is bad enough, but it is even worse to know that a woman who asks for protection might be insulted and sent right back to her abuser.
Turkey should close the gaps in its family protection law by providing that protection orders may be issued to unmarried and divorced women, including women in unregistered religious marriages.
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