Human Trafficking in [Turkey] [other countries]
Street Children in [Turkey] [other countries]
Child Prostitution in [Turkey] [other countries]
 

Child Prostitution

The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children

Republic of Turkey [ Country-by-Country Reports ]

The Republic of Turkey is located in SW Asia and SE Europe [map]. It is bordered by Iraq (SE), Syria and the Mediterranean Sea (S), the Aegean Sea (W), Greece and Bulgaria (NW), on the Black Sea (N), and Armenia, Georgia, and Iran (E). Ankara is its capital and Istanbul its largest city. Three-fifths of the population live in urban centers while the rest live in poor rural areas. Although there have been steady improvements in recent years, the situation of women and children continues to be marked by serious problems due to the persistence of broad geographical, economic and cultural disparities in Turkish society.

CAUTION:  The following links and accompanying text have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Turkey. Some of these links may lead to websites that present allegations that are unsubstantiated, misleading or even false. No attempt has been made to validate their authenticity or to verify their content.

National Plan of Action

U.S. Dept of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs - 2004

INCIDENCE AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - Girls are trafficked to Turkey for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and domestic service from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Moldova, Romania, and Russia, and through the country to Western European destinations.

Bur of Democracy, Human Rights & Labor - Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005

CHILDREN - In December two sociologists published the results of their one‑year study on child prostitution in Istanbul. They estimated there were 300 to 400 girls under 18 working in the sex trade in the city.

Bur of Democracy, Human Rights & Labor - Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2004

TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS – In May, police took testimony from a 17-year-old Romanian victim who described a common trafficking scenario. The victim reported that when she was in ninth grade she came in contact with traffickers who promised her a job with good wages in Istanbul as a baby sitter or housekeeper. In October 2003, traffickers brought her to Istanbul by bus with other Romanian girls and put her up in a hotel. Her captors destroyed her passport and other identification documents, gave her false documents, and threatened to kill her if she spoke to police. She was forced to have intercourse with approximately 200 persons over an 8-month period

Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) - 2001

[62] The Committee recommends that the State party continue to undertake measures to prevent and combat all forms of economic exploitation of children, including commercial sexual exploitation.

[63] While noting that a number of centers have been established, with the collaboration of non-governmental organizations, to provide counseling, training and rehabilitation services for children living in the streets, the Committee nevertheless expresses its concern at the significant number of such children and notes that assistance is generally only provided to them by non-governmental organizations.

Turkey mulling crackdown on child pornography

SPREAD OF INTERNET USE FACILITATES CHILD PORNOGRAPHY - However, according to the report titled “Situational Analysis of Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Turkey: Istanbul and Diyarbakır – 2006”, the forms and manifestations of child abuse remain relatively unknown and undisclosed. The 84-page report found that forcing children into prostitution was the main form of sexual exploitation of children, with a steady increase in the southeastern city of Diyarbakır and in Istanbul.

The report found that the most widely abused group of children was girls between 12 and 18 years old, but that there was also a substantial number of boys who were victims of sexual abuse. Child prostitution occurs in a variety of locales, ranging from slums to the rich, and the culprits have no common profile other than being men.

ECPAT: Fifth Report on implementation of the Agenda for Action [DOC]

[B] COUNTRY UPDATES – TURKEY – The increase from 5 to 8 years of compulsory basic education has been a positive step to combat the rising numbers of runaways and exploited children, including sexually exploited children. However, virginity tests have recently been reinstalled in high schools allowing schools to dismiss students who are found not to be virgins. This will likely increase the already rising number of runaways in the country and make them vulnerable to CSEC. Moreover, girls that have been sexually abused and raped will now be re-victimised by an education system that discriminates against girl children.

U.S. State Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, June 2005

Turkey is a transit and destination country for women and children trafficked primarily for sexual exploitation. Some men, women, and children are also trafficked for forced labor. There has been increasing evidence of internal trafficking of Turkish citizens for forced labor and sexual exploitation. Most victims come from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, including Moldova, Ukraine, Russia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Romania, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Belarus.

ECPAT Takes Make-IT-Safe To Turkey

One of the biggest international investigations into child pornography on the Internet pointed to Istanbul as a major source of child exploitation images.

CSEC Overview

Commercial sexual exploitation of children has grown in Turkey in recent years. Reasons for this growth include the collapsed borders with the FSU and former Soviet-bloc countries, as well as Turkey’s growing popularity as a destination for migrant workers. Where children in Turkey have become victims of commercial sexual exploitation, Turkish authorities have treated the children as juvenile delinquents. Though the majority of sex workers in Turkey are adults, NGOs have recently highlighted the growing incidence of child prostitution.

A woman, native of Turkmenistan, will soon be tried in a court in the [Tajik] capital for exploiting her adopted daughter as a prostitute

In February 2002, the accused adopted the underage girl, as it became known later, with a view to sexual exploitation. She took the 12-year-old girl to the UAE three months afterwards, where the girl (an ethnic Tatar) was for the first time forced into prostitution. The following year, they stayed in Dubai, where the girl was regularly forced into prostitution. She was repeatedly sexually abused.

In February 2003, they were deported from the UAE, but this did not stop the resourceful "mother", and the girl was taken to Turkey in December 2003. There, in Istanbul she was sexually exploited until March this year

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Human Trafficking in [Turkey] [other countries]
Street Children in [Turkey] [other countries]
Child Prostitution in [Turkey] [other countries]