Tag: violence against women

  • Now that It Doesn’t Have to Impress the EU, Turkey Could Curtail Women’s Rights

    Now that It Doesn’t Have to Impress the EU, Turkey Could Curtail Women’s Rights

    Now that It Doesn’t Have to Impress the EU, Turkey Could Curtail Women’s Rights

    originalTurkey, formerly eager for an invite into the European Union clubhouse, has drifted away from the continent it has played historical boogeyman to in the wake of the Arab Spring, and gravitated towards the more conservative values of an Arab world it sees an opportunity to dominate. As a result, according to the New York Times’ Dan Bilefsky, human rights groups worry that renewed conservative vigor in Turkey is starting to erode women’s rights.

    Though experts say that accurate statistics are hard to come by in Turkey because of a serious underreporting of domestic violence, human rights groups have pointed to a recent rash of high-profile attacks on women as evidence that Turkey’s progress on women’s rights is being nibbled away by the zeitgeist of social conservatism prevailing Middle East right now. Violence against women has intensified so dramatically — spiking from 66 reported cases in 2002 to 953 in 2009 — that at least one outreach group is suggesting that Turkish women skip political protests and simply arm themselves with handguns, because nothing says “stop the violence” like a good-old-fashioned gunfight.

    A culture war has ignited in recent years over the role women play in Turkish society. The country, though predominantly Muslim, boasts an official state secularism. Defenders of that secularism have clashed with an increasingly emboldened and ascendant class of religious conservatives, whose rise has led to more men “acting with impunity against women.” Last year alone saw 207,253 cases of deliberate injuries to women across the country, compared with 189,377 in 2010, according to the National Police Headquarters in Ankara. A UN report also shows that incidents of domestic violence in Turkey (39 percent of 12,785 women interviewed across the country reported some type of abuse throughout their lives) topped those percentages of violence among U.S. women (22 percent) and European women (between 3 and 35 percent in different countries).

    Suspicion that women were going to have a hard time under the current governing party increased when President Abdullah Gul approved a controversial bill this month that extended compulsory education to 12 years, but allowed homeschooling after the first eight. Critics have said that such a homeschooling provision could encourage men to take child brides, though the government has brushed off such concerns, emphasizing the fact that the law brings Turkey in line with with international education standards.

    The rise in murders of women to 953 in the first seven months of 2009 predictably surprised the Turkish public, but experts believe that, in a country of about 80 million people, the figure is still low and perhaps skewed by underreporting of such violence. When the governing Justice and Development Party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan came to power in 2002, he made a national push for Turkish membership in the European Union, emphasizing, as part of that campaign, women’s rights. Laws that inhibited women from participating as full-fledged citizens were largely removed and others prohibiting rape within marriage as well as criminalizing so-called “honor killings” were added. Now, observers such as Nigar Goksel at the European Stability Initiative, believe that Turkey is being tugged in a conservative direction by the Arab world, explaining that while the Turkish government started out as friendly towards women, “The Arab Spring is pulling Turkey in a more conservative direction.”

    Others in Turkey contend that new legislation has only improved the lot of Turkish women and that claims that the government is backsliding into sexism or even outright oppression are overblown. Still, Turkey is historically a very patriarchal country, and it might take more than well-meaning legislation to reverse some of the more pervasive and pernicious attitudes about women. As proof of this continuing struggle, Bilefsky notes that, while every municipality with 50,000 people is required by law to have at least one women’s shelter, currently a mere 79 shelters exist across the entire country. That number, according to human rights experts, falls well short of the legal requirement, leaving women who do suffer domestic abuse without a safe haven to turn to.

    Women See Worrisome Shift in Turkey [NY Times]

    via Now that It Doesn’t Have to Impress the EU, Turkey Could Curtail Women’s Rights.

  • Turkey is the first country to ratify the European Convention to combat violence against women

    Turkey is the first country to ratify the European Convention to combat violence against women

    Turkey today ratified the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, following a decision taken by the Turkish parliament in November 2011. Seventeen other member states have also signed the Convention since its opening for signature last May in Istanbul.

    NewsArchive en vienna groupphoto low 1

    The Council of Europe has called on European governments to follow Turkey’s lead so as to permit the treaty’s rapid entry into force.

    The Convention recognises that violence against women constitutes a serious violation of human rights and a form of discrimination. It represents a major step forward in combating such violence through measures aimed at preventing it, protecting victims and reinforcing the criminal penalties that can be imposed on perpetrators under national legal systems. In this connection it criminalises acts such as female genital mutilation, forced marriage, harassment, psychological violence, forced abortion and forced sterilisation.

    Council of Europe Press Division

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    Fax:+33 (0)3 88 41 39 11

    Posted by Frank Elbers at 08:28

    via DARE Network: Turkey is the first country to ratify the European Convention to combat violence against women.

  • Security forces ‘running rampant’ in northern Iraq

    Security forces ‘running rampant’ in northern Iraq

    Tuesday, 14 Apr 2009

    Hundreds of people still detained without trial and beatings commonplace in Iraq's Kurdistan, Amnesty International says
    Hundreds of people still detained without trial and beatings commonplace in Iraq's Kurdistan, Amnesty International says

    Iraq’s northern autonomous Kurdistan region may have escaped the bloodshed that has blighted the rest of the country in recent years, but observers have warned of the desperate human rights situation.

    Security forces that report directly to the region’s president and not the ministry are operating “beyond the rule of law” as detentions without trial and disappearances remain rife, a report out today claims.

    Amnesty International, which conducted the report, said hundreds remain in long-term detention without trial, while electric shocks, beatings with wooden poles and beatings on the soles of the feet are routinely dished out as punishment for detainees.

    “The Kurdistan region has been spared the bloodletting and violence that continues to wrack the rest of Iraq and the Kurdistan regional government has made some important human rights advances,” said Malcolm Smart, director of the human rights group’s Middle East and North Africa programme

    “Yet real problems – arbitrary detention and torture, attacks on journalists and freedom of expression, and violence against women – remain, and urgently need to be addressed by the government.”

    One case highlighted by the report is Walid Yunis Ahmad, a married father of three in his early 40s who worked at a radio and TV station linked to the Islamic Movement in Kurdistan. Originally detained in February 2000 by plain-clothed men believed to be from the Asayish security organisation, as of February this year he was still being held (reportedly in solitary confinement and in poor health) without charge or trial at the group’s headquarters in Erbil.

    It took Mr Ahmad’s family three years to even discover that he was detained – after the Red Cross informed them of his detention, Amnesty International said.

    Source:  www.inthenews.co.uk, 14 Apr 2009