Country of origin information report Turkey March 2007

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Virginity testing
22.30 The European Commission 2004 report noted that “As regards virginity testing, the new [Penal] Code foresees a prison sentence for those ordering and conducting such tests in the absence of a court order. However, contrary to the request of women’s NGOs, the consent of the woman on whom the test is to be conducted is still not required.” [71c] (p45)
22.31 Amnesty International reported in June 2004 that:
“Even when laws change, practices persist that restrict women’s options. After the passage of a law forbidding forced ‘virginity testing’, a study at an Istanbul hospital found that 208 women ‘voluntarily’ underwent a virginity test for ‘social reasons’. We live in a society in which some women consider their own lives to be less important than a tiny membrane, Hülya Gülbahar, lawyer and women’s activist, told Amnesty International.” [12j]

22.32 As noted in the document ‘Turkish Civil and Penal code reforms from a gender perspective: the success of two nationwide campaigns’, published in February 2005 by the Turkish NGO Women for Women’s Human Rights (WWHR) – New Ways:

“The new Penal Code includes an inadequate provision regarding virginity testing. Despite the efforts of the women’s movement, the actual term ‘virginity testing’ is not employed in the Penal Code. Instead, Article 287 entitled ‘Genital Examination’ has been included in the new law. The article stipulates that anyone who performs or takes a person for a genital examination without the proper authorization from a judge or a prosecutor can be sentenced to between three months to one year of imprisonment. Women’s groups are protesting this article as it fails to explicitly name and ban the practice, and also because the article does not require the woman’s consent for genital examination, thereby leaving room for forced examination and human rights violations.” [95a]
Honour killings
22.33 As noted in the USSD 2005 report:
“Honor killings – the killing by immediate family members of women suspected of being unchaste – were a problem. Women’s advocacy groups reported that there were dozens of such killings every year, mainly in conservative Kurdish families in the southeast or among migrants from the southeast living in large cities. Because of sentence reductions for juvenile offenders, observers noted that young male relatives often were designated to perform the killing.”
The USSD 2005 quoted cases of life imprisonments given in October 2005 by two different courts to relatives of women who had been victims of ‘honor killings’. [5b] (Section 5)
22.34 The USSD 2005 report noted that:
“In May a 14-year-old boy shot his mother, Birgul Isik, in Elazig as she returned from Istanbul, where she had discussed being beaten by her husband on a television talk show. Her son allegedly shot her for ‘disgracing the family’. Isik died from her wounds in June. Authorities charged the 14-year-old with murder and also charged Isik’s husband and a stepson with incitement. The trial continued at year’s end.” [5b] (section 5)
22.35 The USSD 2005 report further nopted that, “Dicle University in Diyarbakir conducted a survey on honor killings during the year [2005]. The university polled 430 persons in the southeast; 78 percent of those surveyed were men. The survey revealed that 37.4 percent of the respondents believed honor killings were justified if a wife committed adultery, and 21.6 percent believed infidelity justified punishments such as cutting off a wife’s ear or nose.” [5b] (Section 5)