JINHA

ANKARA – While a draft bill, which justifies sexual abuse and criminals, presented in Turkish parliament, the figures of child abuse show us the dimension of child abuse. According to Turkish statistical Institute (TÜİK), the most child marriages take place in Kilis and the least in Dersim.

Turkish statistical Institute (TÜİK) released a statistic on child marriage in Turkey. According to figures of TÜİK, in 2015, 602,982 people officially got married and 31,337 of these marriages were children at the ages of 16 and 17. This figure constitutes 5.2 percent of total marriages. According to Hürriyet daily, the most child marriages take place in Kilis with the rate of 15, 3 percent. Other cities, where the highest proportions of child marriages are Kars 15,2%, Ağrı, 15,1%, Muş 14,4%, Niğde 13,7%, Bitlis 12,7 %, Maraş 12,5 %, Aksaray 12,1%, Antep 11,8% and Yozgat with the rate of 11,5%.

The least child marriages take place in Dersim. Only five out of 513 official marriages in 2015 were child marriages.

In Istanbul, there were 114,382 official marriages in 2015 and 2,438 out of them were children at the ages of 16 and 17. 1,293 out of 38,139 marriages in Ankara were children, 937 out of 32,469 marriages in Izmir were child marriages.

Number of children, who gave a birth under 15 years old were 2,729 in 2001, 2,561 in 2002, 2,348 in 2003, 1,940 in 2004, 1,635 in 2006, 1,415 in 2007, 1,188 in 2008, 822 in 2009, 533 in 2010, 385 in 2011 and 377 in 2012.