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Turkey is working with agencies to combat widespread
abuse of women. Education and tougher laws are part
of the reform effort.
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — Rojda was 13 when she
was raped two years ago by a neighbor in this
hardscrabble Kurdish province. In order to "cleanse"
her honor, she was forced to marry her attacker in
an unofficial Islamic-style ceremony. He later was
convicted of raping a 7-year-old boy and has been
imprisoned.
But Rojda's troubles were far from over, according
to an account of her ordeal provided by her family
and attorneys. She allegedly was raped again in
March by her father-in-law, who she said demanded
she prostitute herself to earn her keep. When Rojda
refused, the relatives and attorneys charge, a group
of men held her down and sliced off her nose.
Police raided their home after being tipped off by
neighbors, who heard her cries. The men were briefly
detained, then set free — though they have since
been rearrested.
Rojda's story is not unusual: Human rights groups
and Turkish officials say violence against women is
widespread in Turkey, though statistics are hard to
come by because so many attacks go unreported. They
blame the violence on poverty, a lack of education
and the patriarchal structure prevalent in much of
Turkish society.
As this nation seeks to become the European Union's
first predominantly Muslim member, its Islam-rooted
government has teamed up with the EU and other
international groups to combat abuses through a
series of nationwide projects and campaigns.
Their efforts are evident here in Diyarbakir, where
the bar association is training local administrators
to understand and implement new laws that, among
other things, broaden women's rights and stiffen
penalties for their abusers. The $500,000 project is
being funded by the EU.
"We have trained 700 officials over the past year;
awareness is growing," association President Sezgin
Tanrikulu said last week. One such trainee learned
of Rojda's plight soon after her alleged attackers
were initially freed. He took her to Tanrikulu,
complaining that justice had not been served.
Rojda, a childlike figure with enormous dark eyes
set above her disfigured nose, looked terrified,
recalled Tanrikulu. "We pressed fresh charges on her
behalf, and the men were rearrested," he said.
Her mother, Serife, who lives in a muddy tent on the
outskirts of the nearby town of Cinar, said that
Rojda "was my prettiest girl" before the attack.
Serife, who carried a sickly child — her 10th — from
a pouch strapped to her back, said she would "not
find peace" until her daughter was avenged.
Their attorneys requested that Serife and her
daughter be identified only by their first names.
If found guilty on separate counts of rape and
assault, the men could face up to 22 years in
prison, said Meral Bestas, an attorney at the bar
association's women's advisory center, which is
handling Rojda's case.
Staffed by six female lawyers, the center offers
free legal advice to women. Bestas said her clients
are often illiterate and in polygamous and abusive
marriages. Many are afraid to seek help.
"Their men view us as a subversive, corrupting
influence and order them to stay away," Bestas said.
Across from the center, in the Hasirli slum area,
social worker Handan Coskun goes about empowering
women in subtler ways. She supervises a free laundry
service, which attracts hundreds of women and their
children every week.
The laundry doubles as a school where women are
taught to read, write and use birth control. They
are also informed of their legal rights.
"I felt stronger, safer after the courses," said
Naile Gungor, a 49-year-old mother of seven, as she
stuffed her wash into a machine.
Like many here, she is a refugee from one of
thousands of villages that were razed by Turkish
security forces during a 15-year separatist
insurgency led by rebels of the Kurdistan Workers
Party, or PKK. Government plans to repatriate the
villagers have been marred by a resurgence in
violence after the PKK — which has renamed itself
the Kurdistan Freedom and Democracy Congress, or
KADEK — ended a five-year cease-fire last year.
With dozens of refugees crammed into tiny concrete
shacks in shantytowns that have sprung up across the
southeast, "abuse and incest have permeated people's
genes," said Coskun, the social worker.
Another big part of tackling violence against women
involves educating men, said Meltem Agduk, a
consultant with the United Nations Population Fund.
The U.N. agency recently devised a program to
discourage conscripts from engaging in domestic
violence.
With all Turkish men older than 18 required to
perform 15 months of military service, the campaign
should have far-reaching effects, Agduk predicted
during an interview in Ankara, the Turkish capital.
In a similar vein, the government last year
instructed thousands of state-employed Muslim
clerics to preach against "honor killings," slayings
committed by male relatives of women and girls
accused of staining their family's reputation.
Under Turkey's new penal code that will come into
effect June 1, sentences for such crimes will be
significantly increased. In the past, those
convicted could get sentences reduced to as few as
three years in prison because protecting the
family's honor was seen as a mitigating
circumstance. Now they will serve as much time as
any other convicted murderer.
Despite such efforts, the killings continue.
This year in the province of Batman, east of
Diyarbakir, an 18-year-old girl was shot to death by
her brother for wearing blue jeans.
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