Women Rights Watch

As you are aware, recent reports from the Journalist and Writers Foundation in Turkey and the Stockholm Center for Freedom have estimated the number of women in Turkish prisons is a staggering 17,000 along with over 660 children. Official records indicate that 23 percent of these children are infants less than a year old. Dr. Alan Mendoza, executive director of the Henry Jackson Society (a British foreign policy think tank) said “prison is no place for children in any civilized country”. These reports have questioned the basis for the detainment and imprisonment of these women, as well as the timing of their arrests, in some cases shortly after giving birth. Many of these women have been held without charges being pressed and without access to legal representation, and in some cases, access to their family. Reports from within Turkey have shown images of security officials waiting outside hospital rooms for mothers to be discharged in order to detain them and their newborn c...

1. Hundreds of Young Turkish Children Jailed Alongside Their Moms as Part of a Post-Coup Crackdown Feb. 13, 2018 Turkey’s Justice Ministry provided a somewhat lower figure,  stating  that a total of 560 children under the age of 6 were being held in Turkish prisons along with their mothers. Mothers and their children continue to be rounded up with tens of thousands of other Turks following the July 2016 coup attempt against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The country has, since that attempt, been in a legal “state of emergency,” one that allows the government to jail anyone believed to have ties to  exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen and his Hizmet movement. http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/02/13/hundreds-young-turkish-children-jailed-alongside-their-moms-as-part-post-coup-crackdown.html   #Turkey #humanrights #foxnews #jailedmothers #jailedwomen #internationalnews #15July2016 #coupattempt #prison #un #HizmetMovement 

1. Report on the impact of the state of emergency on human rights in Turkey, including an update on the South-East http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/TR/2018-03-19_Second_OHCHR_Turkey_Report.pdf   March 2018 / (29 Pages) The present report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) provides an overview of key human rights concerns in Turkey in the period between January and December 2017, with a focus on the consequences of the state of emergency on the enjoyment of human rights. The findings of OHCHR point to a constantly deteriorating human rights situation, exacerbated by the erosion of the rule of law. OHCHR notes with concern that the emergency decrees foster impunity and lack of accountability by affording legal, administrative, criminal and financial immunity to administrative authorities acting within the framework of the decrees. 2. Women’s Rights Under Attack in Turkey  http://jwf.org/wp-content/upl...

We Will Stop Femicide Platform February 2018 report indicated that  47  women were killed by men during the 28 day period. [157]   The Platform to Stop Murders of Women (Kadın Cinayetlerini Durduracağız Platformu) reported  237  murders of women in 2013, the vast majority of whom had been killed by partners, ex-partners, and family members. [3] Most alarming, hundreds of women, children and elderly are among approximately  1,200  local residents killed between July 2015 and December 2016 in the context of security operations in Southeast Turkey. [4]   The Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ revealed in February 2017 that at least  5  women have died under suspicious circumstances at the women’s prison in Kocaeli’s Gebze district, during the second half of 2016. [25]   There are several figures reported in the Turkish media which put the number of women in prison at  6,616  as of March 2016 and  7,894  as...