Turkish proposal protecting child marriage sparks debate

It allows the indefinite postponement of sentences for sexual abuse committed “without force, threat or trick”.

Courts in Turkey permit civil marriages for people as young as 16, and many younger people are also married in Islamic ceremonies.

Fidan Ataselim from the campaign group “Let’s Stop Women’s Murders” said it would be hard to establish whether an underage victim gave consent, and the bill would pave the way for forced child marriages.

The U.N. children’s fund said on Saturday it was “deeply concerned” over a draft bill in Turkey that would overturn a child sex assault conviction if the offender married his victim.

The Turkish government has withdrawn a proposed bill that pardons men who rape underage girls if they marry them.

United Nations agencies including UNICEF issued a joint statement on Monday warning the proposal “would weaken the country’s ability to combat sexual abuse and child marriages”.

The reasoning behind statutory rape laws holds that children can not give meaningful consent to sex. The postponement of sentencing will occur only if the perpetrator marries the victim, and will reportedly only be applied to past cases that occurred between 2005 and 2016.

The government had insisted the legislation was aimed at dealing with the widespread custom of child marriages and the criticism was a crude distortion of its aim.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his AKP party are behind the bill that would pardon 3,000 convicted rapists.

Only when the proposal was read aloud during a plenary session, did officials become aware of its existence, and opposition leaders moved quickly to delay its passage, said Senal Sarihan, an MP representing Ankara for the Republican People’s Party, Turkey’s second largest political party. “On the other hand, if they don’t, we will assess the requests of the public as well as those of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and amend [the proposal]”, he said.

Speaking on Premier’s News Hour, Peter Grant from Restored, said: “We were appalled at the prospect of a bill that would exonerate men who were guilty of rape of underage girls”. “AKP is passing any law they want in the parliament”.

The proposals have prompted angry responses from opposition and rights groups. Child marriage is abuse in itself; to use it as a mitigating factor in a rape would be a complete perversion of justice to favor the desires of older men over the rights and physical, psychological, and emotional wellbeing of girls.

Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag and other government ministers had strenuously rejected critics’ claims that it would have legalised child rape.

“If there was an understanding that child marriage constituted sexual assault such a proposal would not even be brought up”, said Yilmaz.