Domestic violence and femicides proceed plaguing Turkish girls whereas authorities look into the causes of prevalence. Minister of Family and Social Services Derya Yanık advised Anadolu Agency (AA) that compelled marriages at an early age perpetuated the “cycle of violence” girls are uncovered to.
In a current interview, Yanık stated such marriages restricted girls’s lives. “They have a shorter period of education, face challenges to join the workforce. Their self-development is restricted and they lag behind other women in terms of participation in social and economic life,” she lamented.
Early marriage is a social downside in Türkiye the place the phenomenon is extra prevalent in rural areas. Experts say it has social legitimacy regardless of an official ban, and outdated social values and financial elements are main elements behind these marriages.
Yanık stated the successive Justice and Development Party (AK Party) governments have been dedicated to tackling the problem since 2002 and took important steps, by consciousness campaigns for women’ schooling and authorized measures to stop compelled marriages at an early age, which “bore fruit.” In 2002, the nation raised the authorized marriage age to 17 from 15. It additionally elevated jail phrases for these concerned within the sexual abuse of underage individuals, in a bid to finish the infamous “forced marriage of raped girls with the perpetrator.” The nation additionally elevated the obligatory schooling interval to 12 years. “This step was actually an important milestone to prevent early marriages,” Yanık stated. In the previous, early marriages usually ended up with women being compelled to drop out of college because the obligatory schooling interval was far shorter. With longer schooling years and monitoring the households who drive their kids to drop out of college, the federal government managed to curb early marriages and helped extra women to have entry to schooling.
The minister stated they concentrated their efforts in provinces with a excessive price of early marriages with an motion plan in 2017 and “emergency plans” have been put in place in 23 provinces. Plans embrace consciousness schooling, an expanded job drive to stop early marriages and help of local people leaders to remove the phenomenon. “Eventually, the rate of early marriages dropped by 71%,” the minister stated. “The rate of marriage of girls between the ages of 16 and 17 was 7.3% in 2002 and as of 2022, it is around 2.3%,” she said.
