Fight against domestic violence stalls in ‘Islamist’ Turkey.

Rise in violence is same as rise of AKP

Fight against domestic violence stalls in ‘Islamist’ Turkey. (HD).

Whenever Hayat reported abuse, either her husband was released by police after a few hours, or she was offered shelter which would have meant her children being taken away.

“Go speak to a hundred women, you’ll hear pretty much the same story. It’s like a pre-destined misery that we’re born to live through,” Hayat, the only name she gives so as to protect her identity, told Reuters.

Turkey, which aspires to join the European Union, has drafted new legislation to try to bring women’s rights in line with European standards. A law sent to Parliament just last month will toughen sentencing for sexual assault.

Officials say the number of shelters has doubled in the past three years and victim support centers have been set up, allowing women like Hayat to receive protection and remain with their children.

But activists and lawyers say there are still not enough, and that an increasingly conservative and authoritarian political culture under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government, means progress is, at best, halting.

Turkey ranked 120th of 136 nations in the World Economic Forum’s 2013 Gender Gap Index, down 15 places since 2006, while a 2011 U.N. report indicated domestic violence rates were almost twice those in the United States, and ten times higher than in some European countries.

“There is a real concrete, open threat to our rights. They want to take them back from us, and we don’t want to give them back,” said Zelal Ayman, an activist with Istanbul-based Women for Women’s Rights (WWHR).

She points to Erdoğan’s strident views on everything from abortion to the number of children women should have, the sort of meddling in private life that may bolster his standing among his pious core supporters but which alienates a more Western-leaning, secularist strain of Turkish society.

In a 2010 speech, he said he did “not believe in the equality of men and women.” Two years later, he likened abortions to the killing of civilians in a military airstrike; activists say abortions all but stopped, since many healthworkers became too frightened to carry them out.

Yıldız Tokman from the Association for Monitoring Gender Equality says Erdoğan’s words have made abortions de facto illegal and women in Turkey less safe.

“Government officials act like small prime ministers, saying that a woman’s place is with her husband. I’m afraid of increasing conservatism. With conservatism, the first victim is always women,” she said.Hmmm.....In Gods name keep Turkey out of Europe. Read the full story here.