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Factbook
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Factbook on Global Sexual
Exploitation
Turkey
Trafficking
Turkey is one the most popular destinations in Europe for trafficked
women from Ukraine and Russia. (Vladmir Isachenkov, "Soviet Women Slavery Flourishes
" Associated Press, 6 November 1997)
Prostitutes are now commonly referred to as "Natashas" because so many come
from Russia. ("'Invisible' Women Shown In Russia's Demographics," Martina
Vandenberg, St. Petersburg Times, 13 October 1997)
Case
In 1996, in Istanbul, two trafficked Russian women were thrown to their deaths from a
balcony while six of their friends watched. (Ukrainian police, Michael Specter,
"Traffickers’ New Cargo: Naive Slavic Women," New York Times, 11
January 1998)
Prostitution
Prostitutes in the southern Turkish city of Adana
went on strike to protest what they say is constant police harassment. The women complain
that police have put restrictions on playing music, leaning out of windows and talking to
customers outside the state-run brothels where they work. Turkey allows licensed
prostitutes to trade in approved buildings known as "General Houses." (Anatolian
news agency, "Turkish prostitutes on strike over police pressure," Reuters,
4 May 1998)
Organized and Institutionalized Sexual
Exploitation and Violence
Honor Killings
Gonul Aslan, a 19-year-old woman from the southeastern province of Urfa was strangled
and thrown into a river for "dishonouring" her family by eloping with a lover.
Her father, husband and uncles planned her murder. Gonul was married two months previously
in an unofficial Islamic ceremony to her paternal aunt's son, Saban, to whom she had been
promised when a baby. She survived the attack. (Amberin Zaman, 1998)
Official Response and Action
Turkish prisons often force virginity testing on female
prisoners, saying the exams reduce allegations of rape by guards. Human rights groups say
the tests are a way of harassing female political prisoners. ("German woman protests
forced virginity test in Turkish prison," Associated Press, 20 August 1998)
A German
women subjected to a forced virginity test while in prison will not be allowed by Turkish
prosecutors to sue prison officials. Eva Junckhe was arrested in October 1997 on charges
of belonging to an outlawed Kurdish rebel group. She has been locked up in a prison in
southeastern Turkey pending a verdict in her trial. Junckhe claims to have been forcibly
examined by doctors two weeks after her arrest. Her lawyer, Eren Keskin, said the chief
state security court prosecutor for the southeastern city of Van rejected an application
for a lawsuit. If a renewed application is denied, Junckhe will take her protest to the
European Court of Human Rights. ("German woman protests forced virginity test in
Turkish prison," Associated Press, 20 August 1998)
Factbook Table of Contents
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Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
Factbook on Global Sexual Exploitation
Donna M. Hughes, Laura Joy Sporcic, Nadine Z. Mendelsohn and Vanessa Chirgwin
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