JINHA

AMED – Women's groups warned that courts in Turkey's Bingöl province were guilty of covering up war crimes by releasing child-molesting soldiers.

Congress of Free Women (KJA)-affiliated women's groups gathered in Diyarbakır for a protest to denounce the Turkish court's decision to release two and give light sentences to six of the eight specialist sergeants charged with sexually abusing a 15-year-old in Bingöl province.

"Given what the victim had experienced with the defendants, what happened to her was foreseeable," read the court decision. "Seeing as she met with more than one of the defendants and given her general life experience, there is no significant space for doubt that sexual relations happened with the victim's consent."

The women noted the similarities between this ruling and the 2002 case of N.Ç. in Mardin province, who the court determined consciously consented to being raped by 26 people because the 13-year-old victim did not "resist" the rapes. The case lasted 11 years. The women said both cases violated children's rights agreements that define all under the age of 18 as children and require signatory states to protect them.

"The court has used this excuse to cover up war crimes and neglected the European Human Rights Agreement, CEDAW and the Geneva Convention, to which Turkey is a signatory," the women said. "The files on harassment and rapes by security forces (specialist sergeants, village guards, soldiers, etc.) against women and children in Kurdistan are extremely swollen. We saw at the end of the Bingöl case why this crime ring is so comfortable. The decision related to this rape is not independent from power and the system."

The women pledged to continue fighting for crimes against women and children to be prosecuted.

(fk/cm)