March 1, 1998
The Washington Post
To the Editor:
Kelly Couturier’s 2/28 report, "Turkish Muslims Protest Ban on Scarves, Beards" failed to address a hidden dimension to the Turkish government’s ban on head scarves for women attending educational institutions: the ban is as much a women’s issue as it is a religious one.
As with Turkey’s earlier ban on religious head scarves worn by female attorneys in courtrooms, the targets of this discriminatory prohibition are upwardly mobile Turkish women of Muslim faith who are seeking to better themselves. Particularly disturbing for Americans is the fact that the ban not only involves the Turkish Government’s religious discrimination of its citizens but that it further involves the denial of a woman’s right to choose for herself something as personal as her headdress. This underscores a disturbing reality in Turkish society that, despite multi-million dollar grandstanding by Turkey’s public relations spindoctors about how western a nation Turkey has become, Turkish women remain second-class citizens and are subjected to even more insidious violations of their rights than the gender-specific religious ban reported on by Ms. Couturier.
Among the most notorious and widespread of such practices is the imposition of forcible virginity control examinations. In 1994, the Human Rights Watch Women’s Rights Project released a report entitled "A Matter of Power: State Control of Women’s Virginity in Turkey" condemning the imposition of these highly intrusive involuntary medical procedures on Turkish women by their government. The women subjected to these exams range from those applying for government jobs, female state dormitory residents, female complainants in sexual assault investigations, and female hospital patients, to female political detainees and criminal suspects in police custody. In the case of female detainees of political crimes¾which, under the now infamous Article 8 "Anti-Terrorist Law", often include activities as innocuous as writing a poem in the Kurdish language or publicly criticizing Turkey’s authoritarian regime¾the forcible virginity control examinations take on a more menacing dimension. As stated by a Human Rights Watch Summary of the Women’s Rights Project report:
In the case of political detainees, the exams are themselves abusive. Women victims of virginity exams report that the exams are degrading and often painful. In most instances, they involve the actual or threatened use of force and the insertion of a speculum or hand into the vagina. In one case Human Rights Watch investigated, two female journalists were detained for their suspected political activity and twice forced to undergo virginity exams after a state doctor threatened, "You better do this or they [the police] will force your legs apart for you." Political detainees are often taunted with the exams’ results, threatened by guards that they will have their "virginity removed" (the report documents cases of custodial rape) and, on occasion, are subjected to exams as a form of punishment.
The summary further states that the report:
details how [the] police abuse their power to monitor public behavior by detaining women arbitrarily and forcing them to undergo exams to determine their virginity or whether they have engaged in recent sexual activity. In August 1992, Istanbul police detained a thirty-nine year-old grandmother and two of her friends while they were eating in a restaurant. Never charged, the women were subjected to vaginal exams against their will and held in s state venereal diseases hospital for over one week.
Even more disturbing than the forced virginity controls is that (according to a September 1994 report by the UNHCR):
women in detention are susceptible to rape by the security forces or the police in order to force information out of them, such as the case of a woman suspected of collaborating with the PKK, who claimed to have been raped by six men from Istanbul’s anti-terrorist squad in December 1993, and was subsequently forced to sign a deposition to the effect that the rapists were not policemen but that the rape had been committed by another young man detained the same day with her (Inter Press Service, 7 February 1994). Another source indicates that a woman lawyer belonging to the Turkish Human Rights Association reported being "slapped, kicked, stripped, hosed with freezing water, and sexually insulted" during interrogation (Index on Censorship, July/August 1994).
Turkey’s endemic repression of its citizens, and particularly of its women, should no longer be ignored for the sake of ill-perceived U.S. strategic interests. Given the vast amounts of financial, political and military assistance given to Turkey by U.S. taxpayers, Americans have a right to demand of fellow NATO-member Turkey genuine reforms in the area of women’s civil and political rights.
Sincerely,
Maria Ressos, Esq.
Associate Director
March 3, 1998
To National Public Radio:
Your report early last week concerning opportunities for political advancement afforded women in Turkey missed one very important point: as with Benazir Bhutto's stewardship of Pakistan, the inclusion of women in some high political positions in Turkey signals less a victory for gender equality in a Muslim country than a sharing of power within a ruling elite.
As evinced by Turkey's recently lifted ban on head scarves for women attending educational institutions, and as with its earlier ban on religious head scarves worn by female attorneys in courtrooms, the targets of this discriminatory prohibition are upwardly mobile Turkish women of Muslim faith who are seeking to better themselves. Particularly disturbing for Americans is the fact that the ban not only involves the Turkish Government's religious discrimination of its citizens but that it further involves the denial of a woman's right to choose for herself something as personal as her headdress.
More importantly, your report wholly overlooks the fact that women from certain target groups in Turkey, such as Kurds, dissident journalists and attorneys fare far worse that their counterparts in strictly Muslim countries, as they are exposed to custodial rape, forced virginity exams, and worse.
Among the most notorious and widespread of such practices is the imposition of forcible virginity control examinations. In 1994, the Human Rights Watch Women's Rights Project released a report entitled "A Matter of Power: State Control of Women's Virginity in Turkey" condemning the imposition of these highly intrusive involuntary medical procedures on Turkish women by their government. The women subjected to these exams range from those applying for government jobs, female state dormitory residents, female complainants in sexual assault investigations, and female hospital patients, to female political detainees and criminal suspects in police custody. In the case of female detainees of political crimes --- which, under the now infamous Article 8 "Anti-Terrorist Law", often include activities as innocuous as writing a poem in the Kurdish language or publicly criticizing Turkey's authoritarian regime --- the forcible virginity control examinations take on a more menacing dimension. As stated by a Human Rights Watch Summary of the Women's Rights Project report:
"In the case of political detainees, the exams are themselves abusive. Women victims of virginity exams report that the exams are degrading and often painful. In most instances, they involve the actual or threatened use of force and the insertion of a speculum or hand into the vagina. In one case Human Rights Watch investigated, two female journalists were detained for their suspected political activity and twice forced to undergo virginity exams after a state doctor threatened, 'You better do this or they [the police] will force your legs apart for you.' Political detainees are often taunted with the exams' results, threatened by guards that they will have their 'virginity removed' (the report documents cases of custodial rape) and, on occasion, are subjected to exams as a form of punishment."
The summary further states that the report:
"details how [the] police abuse their power to monitor public behavior by detaining women arbitrarily and forcing them to undergo exams to determine their virginity or whether they have engaged in recent sexual activity. In August 1992, Istanbul police detained a thirty-nine year-old grandmother and two of her friends while they were eating in a restaurant. Never charged, the women were subjected to vaginal exams against their will and held in s state venereal diseases hospital for over one week."
Even more disturbing than the forced virginity controls is that (according to a September 1994 report by the UNHCR):
"women in detention are susceptible to rape by the security forces or the police in order to force information out of them, such as the case of a woman suspected of collaborating with the PKK, who claimed to have been raped by six men from Istanbul's anti-terrorist squad in December 1993, and was subsequently forced to sign a deposition to the effect that the rapists were not policemen but that the rape had been committed by another young man detained the same day with her (Inter Press Service, 7 February 1994). Another source indicates that a woman lawyer belonging to the Turkish Human Rights Association reported being 'slapped, kicked, stripped, hosed with freezing water, and sexually insulted' during interrogation (Index on Censorship, July/August 1994)."
Turkey's endemic repression of its citizens, and particularly of its women, should no longer be ignored for the sake of ill-perceived U.S. strategic interests. Given the vast amounts of financial, political and military assistance given to Turkey by U.S. taxpayers, Americans have a right to demand of fellow NATO-member Turkey genuine reforms in the area of women's civil and political rights. Offering Turkey as a showcase for the progress of women's issues is not only absurd but disrespectful to the thousands of Turkish women who have fallen victim to that country's repressive policies.
Sincerely,
Maria Ressos, Esq.
Associate Director