Uak l Milli Eitim Mdrl UAK EU Projects

Uşak İl Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü

UŞAK EU Projects Team

Avrupa Birliği Topluluk Programları Comenius, Leonardo da Vinci, Grundtvig, Youth

Uşak Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü AB Projeler Ekibi AB Projeleri Alt Başlık

Uşak Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü AB Projeler Ekibi Violence Against Women in Turkey Outline • • • Definitions Statistics Causes Solutions Evaluation/Conclusion

Uşak Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü AB Projeler Ekibi Violence Against Women in Turkey Definition of Domestic Violence • Any incident of threating behaviour, violence or abuse between adults who are or have been intimate partners or family members, regardless of gender or sexuality. • Physical • Psychological • Verbal • Sexual • Financial • Emotional

Uşak Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü AB Projeler Ekibi Violence Against Women in Turkey Definition of Domestic Violence • Women experience various types and degrees of violence at their homes, where they should feel safe; however, they are exposed to violence by the people they rely on such as their fathers, brothers, and especially their husbands/partners with whom they share their lives. • Domestic violence against women suppresses women and makes them dependent on their husbands/partners. Moreover, it causes women to lose their self-confidence and self-respect, forms unpleasant model for the next generation and destroys the physical and mental health of women and children.

Uşak Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü AB Projeler Ekibi Violence Against Women in Turkey Statistics • Violence Against Women in Turkey • Population of women: 37, 688, 700/75, 705, 100 Life expectancy of women (at birth): 75 School life expectancy for women: 11 • Women's adult literacy: 81% Unemployment of women: 9. 4% Women engaged in economic activity: 24%

Uşak Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü AB Projeler Ekibi Violence Against Women in Turkey Statistics • According to formal datas, 28. 000 women are abused last year in Turkey and 95 of them are murdered. • 1 in 3 women in Turkey have experience domestic violence. • %42 of women in Turkey are exposed to physical and sexual abuse, and the ages are usually 40 -59. • %44 of women in Turkey are exposed to emotional abuse at least once in a period of their lives. • The proportion of women exposed to economic abuse becomes 4 out of 10. (National Research on Domestic Violance against Women in Turkey made by Prime Ministry Directorate of General on the Status of Women, Turkish Statistic Instutition and Hacettepe University, 2009)

Uşak Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü AB Projeler Ekibi Violence Against Women in Turkey Gender Equality in Turkey In 2001, the Turkish Civil Code was updated to put women on equal footing in the family. Article 41 of the Constitution was revised to note that the family in Turkish society is “based on equality between spouses. ” The new code also granted women equal rights to property acquired during marriage, which, according to Women for Women’s Human Rights (hereinafter, WWHR), “[assigned] an economic value to women’s hitherto invisible labor for the well-being of the family household” (WWHR, Turkish Civil and Penal Code Reforms from a Gender Perspective: The Success of Two Nationwide Campaigns, 2005). “Men and women have equal rights. The State shall have the obligation to ensure that this equality exists in practice”

Uşak Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü AB Projeler Ekibi Violence Against Women in Turkey Domestic Violence in Turkey The reform of the Turkish Penal Code in 2004 was achieved as result of a concerted campaign by women’s civil society organizations. The new Penal Code represents an important step forward in “ensuring that domestic violence is no longer viewed as an acceptable, ‘ordinary’ phenomenon but rather as a ‘crime’” (Icon Institute Public Sector, Hacettepe University Institute of Population Studies, and BNB Consulting, National Research on Domestic Violence against Women in Turkey, 2009). This rejection of domestic violence as the status quo was affirmed in June 2009 when the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Turkey had failed to fulfill its obligation to protect Nahide Opuz and her mother from brutal domestic violence inflicted by Opuz’s husband. The judgment represented the first time the Court had spelled out a state’s obligations in regard to domestic violence, stressing that such violence is not a private matter but instead an issue that requires state intervention (International Centre for the Protection of Human Rights, European Court finds Turkey in violation of obligations to protect women from domestic violence, 2008).

Uşak Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü AB Projeler Ekibi Violence Against Women in Turkey Sexual Assault The reform of Turkish Penal Code in 2004 was achieved as result of a concerted campaign by women’s civil society organizations. Aimed at holistic reform, the campaign succeeded in redefining sexual crimes as crimes committed against individuals rather than crimes against society, family, or public morality. WWHR noted that in the penal code “all references to vague patriarchal constructs such as chastity, morality, shame, public customs, or decency have been eliminated and definitions of such crimes against women brought in line with global human rights norms” (WWHR, Turkish Civil and Penal Code Reforms from a Gender Perspective: The Success of Two Nationwide Campaigns, 2005).

Uşak Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü AB Projeler Ekibi Violence Against Women in Turkey Honor Killings Honor killings were addressed in two ways in the Penal Code reform of 2004. First, Article 29 on “unjust provocation” was modified to limit its scope to “unlawful acts” and render it inapplicable to honor killings; previously, the provision had been used to rationalize shorter sentences on the grounds that the violation of a man’s honor was justification of murder. Second, article 82 on aggravated homicide was updated to include a clause that referred to honor killings, albeit as “homicides by motivation of custom. ” The use of the term “custom killings” has raised concerns among women’s NGOs, which argue that using the term will “provide a legal loophole that limits the scope of the article to only a certain type of honor killing, such as family assembly verdicts, or as if it only exists in certain regions where certain customs prevail” (Executive Committee for NGO Forum on CEDAW – Turkey, Shadow NGO Report on Turkey’s Sixth Periodic Report to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, July 2010).

Uşak Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü AB Projeler Ekibi Violence Against Women in Turkey Trafficking (1) Persons who provide, kidnap or shelter or transfer a person (s) from one place to another unlawfully and by force, threat or violence or misconduct of power or by executing acts of enticement or taking advantage of control power on helpless persons in order to force them to work or serve for others or to send them away where he is treated almost like a slave, are sentenced to imprisonment from eight years to twelve years and punished with punitive fine up to ten thousand days. (2) In case of execution of acts which constitute offense in the definition of first subsection, the consent of the victim is considered void. (3) In case of kidnapping, providing, sheltering or transfer of a person(s) who is under the age of eighteen, the offender is subject to the punishments indicated in the first subsection even if he did not execute the acts causing offense. (4) Security precautions are applied for the legal entities committing such offenses.

Uşak Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü AB Projeler Ekibi Violence Against Women in Turkey Solutions 1. Legal Arrangements: Realization of the legal arrangements on gender discrimination and domestic violence against women and elimination of enforcement related defects; 2. Social awareness and mental transformation: Creation of public awareness and mental transformation on gender equality and domestic violence against women in order to eradicate attitudes and behaviors that generate and reinforce domestic violence; 3. Advancement of women’s socio-economic status: Making the necessary arrangements for strengthening the socio-economic status of women, and ensuring the full enforcement of such arrangements;

Uşak Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü AB Projeler Ekibi Violence Against Women in Turkey Solutions 4. Protective services: Ensuring organization and implementation of attainable protective services towards women victimized by domestic violence and their children (if any); 5. Curative and rehabilitation services: Ensuring organization and provision of curative and rehabilitation services towards women victimized by domestic violence and the perpetrators, and; 6. Inter-sectoral cooperation: Establishing a mechanism of cooperation amongst institutions and relevant sectors with regard to the service delivery to women victimized by domestic violence and their children (if any).

Uşak Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü AB Projeler Ekibi Violence Against Women in Turkey Solutions 7. Research Analysis of relationship between partner characteristics and the experience of partner violence as reported by the women, including analysis of men’s attituteds towards domestic violence, using the qualitative data. 8. Effective Implementation Reforms have arguably been ground-breaking in terms of establishing an effective legal framework for addressing violence against women in EU, in particular with regards to domestic violence and sexual violence, unfortunately it is not possible to speak of an advance of parallel proportions in terms of effective implementation and broad enough impact. While a comprehensive in depth analysis of the inadequacies of implementation extends the scope and focus of this paper, this section will seek to draw attention to a few examples to highlight the ongoing discrepancy.

Uşak Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü AB Projeler Ekibi Violence Against Women in Turkey Solutions 9. Examples of Impact of the Legal Reforms While the necessary measures for effective implementation remain to be met, the legal reforms have led to subsequent positive developments in terms of precedent court cases. In addition, violence against women has become more of a topic of debate in the parliament and there have been further –though limited in scope and depth- initiatives by the government. Simultaneously, public and media attention to the issue has also increased, which has led to media campaigns and more mainstream awareness. 10. Raise Social, Economic and Political Status of Women in EU: Societal discrimination and traditional notions of women’s role in the family adversely affect the ability of women to take advantage of educational and employment opportunities and, as a result, their rate of economic, social and political participation is low. Although women continue to improve their professional standing particularly in urban areas they still lag far behind men.

Uşak Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü AB Projeler Ekibi Violence Against Women in Turkey Legislation About Women Rights The 1980 s have witnessed strengthening of the women’s movement both at the international level and in Turkey itself, leading to an increase in the public awareness of women’s rights. As a result, starting from the latter half of the 1990 s, the relevant national legislation has been undergoing a process of review and important steps have been taken towards the establishment of gender equality through various legal amendments. A major legal act has been dealt to honour crimes with the new Turkish Penal Code which entered into force on 1 June 2005. The de facto reduction of sentences in the case of “honour killings” was abolished with the new Code. Special training programs are being carried out for security forces, health care personnel and other public servants who deal with women subjected to violence. The Directorate General on the Status of Women and the Directorate General of Social Services and Child Protection Agency also undertake training programs on the human rights of women in collaboration with non-governmental organizations.

Uşak Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü AB Projeler Ekibi Violence Against Women in Turkey Legislation About Women Rights Under Law No. 5223, adopted on 14 July 2004, amending the Law on Civil Servants, and the Communique published in the Official Gazette on 26 August 2004, the period of maternity leave has been extended from 9 weeks to 16 weeks. The Law on the organization and duties of the Directorate General on the Status of Women, which was established in 1990, was adopted by the Parliament on 6 November 2004. In addition to the amendments made to national legislation within the framework of women’s rights, women issues and gender equality, the Turkish Government also takes important steps in the international fora. Turkey is a party to the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) since 1985, as well as to its Optional Protocol since 2002.

Uşak Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü AB Projeler Ekibi Violence Against Women in Turkey Legislation About Women Rights On May 17, 2004, supremacy was given to international conventions concerning basic rights and freedoms, Including the CEDAW, over all national laws. This amendment placed CEDAW above all other legal arrangements which may be in conflict with its provisions. In accordance with this amendment, existing laws will have to be interpreted in the light of CEDAW provisions and principles. As an embodiment of the importance attached to struggling with violence against women, Turkey co-sponsored the draft resolution entitled “Working towards the Elimination of Crmies Committed in the Name of Honor” with the UK. The said draft resolution was adopted on December 2004 during the 59 th Session of the UN General Assembly.

Uşak Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü AB Projeler Ekibi Violence Against Women in Turkey Legislation About Women Rights On May 17, 2004, supremacy was given to international conventions concerning basic rights and freedoms, Including the CEDAW, over all national laws. This amendment placed CEDAW above all other legal arrangements which may be in conflict with its provisions. In accordance with this amendment, existing laws will have to be interpreted in the light of CEDAW provisions and principles. As an embodiment of the importance attached to struggling with violence against women, Turkey co-sponsored the draft resolution entitled “Working towards the Elimination of Crmies Committed in the Name of Honor” with the UK. The said draft resolution was adopted on December 2004 during the 59 th Session of the UN General Assembly. Moreover, Turkey has served as a host country to various initiatives such as the conference held on December 14 – 15, 2006 in the context of EUROMED and Ministerial Conference of Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) on women’s issues held on November 21 – 22, 2006.

Uşak Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü AB Projeler Ekibi Violence Against Women in Turkey Evaluation & Conslusion 1. Turkey is empowering the women day by day 2. There are several legislation development 3. Turkey established a special ministry called «Family and Social Affairs Ministry» 4. Turkey is cooperating with EU and UN about empowering women in society 5. Media is supporting about creating awareness to stop the domestic violence

UŞAK MİLLİ EĞİTİM MÜDÜRLÜĞÜ AB Projeler Koordinasyon Ekibi 0 276 224 4872 ab 64@meb. gov. tr THANKS