‘Turkey’s Parliament should listen to children’

* Some of the children who lost their lives as a result of state violence

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The Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Child Commission has released a written statement listing the violations of rights faced by children.

Addressing the press and the public yesterday (April 25), two days after the April 23 Children's Day in Turkey, the Commission raised concerns about the problems and violations experienced by children.

According to the statement signed by HDP Child Commission Co-Spokesperson Hüseyin Kaçmaz, "Children become an issue on the agenda everyday either as a result of an incident of abuse or violence. The number of trials over child abuse has seen a 3-fold increase in 10 years."

Citing a Human Rights Association (İHD) report, Kaçmaz noted that Turkey ranks third in the world in terms of child abuse, adding that official data is not shared by the state institutions any longer.

Raising concerns about the current economic crisis, unemployment and poverty in Turkey as well, Hüseyin Kaçmaz underlined that children are the ones who are affected most by deep poverty:

"Thousands of children are deprived of their right to food, which is their most basic right. Chronic poverty affects children's development. The more parents' purchasing power declines, the more children are compelled to quit education and start working.

"As a matter of fact, today, thousands of children are compelled or forced to work. According to the official data shared with the public, 26 thousand children were compelled to work in Turkey as of the end of 2021."

Raising concerns about the imprisoned children as well, HDP's Kaçmaz noted that hundreds of children are held in prison with their mothers.

Listing children's problems further, he underlined that thousands of children try to survive substance abuse; millions of children are deprived of their right to education in the mother language, which forces them to be educated in a language that they do not know; and thousands of children, especially Alevi children, are subjected to compulsory religious education.

Deaths by armored vehicle crashes

Within this context, HDP Child Commission's Co-Spokesperson Hüseyin Kaçmaz also talked about the deaths of children as a result of law enforcement and security officers' use of armored vehicles, especially in Turkey's Kurdish-majority provinces in the east and southeast.

According to the MP, "between the years of 2008 and 2022, 56 citizens, 24 of whom were children, lost their lives as a result of armored vehicle crashes in the Kurdistan geography while 141 people, at least 22 of whom were children, were wounded in such incidents."

Kaçmaz also mentioned the children who died as a result of armored vehicle crashes and other forms of state violence: Efe Tektekin, Muhammet ve Furkan Yıldırım kardeşler, Miraç miroğlu, Cemile Çağırga, Mazlum Akay, Doğan Teyboğa, Umut Furkan Akçil, Ahmet İmre, Enver Turan, Canan Saldık, Birem Basan, Oğuzcan Akyürek, İzzettin Boz, Mehmet Nuri, Ceylan Önkol, Uğur Kaymaz and the 17 children massacred in Roboski...

Calling on Turkey to withdraw its reservations on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child immediately and listen to the voices of children, the HDP Child Commission requested that a Child Specialization Committee be established under the roof of the Parliament.

Recalling that the HDP submitted a bill last week for this end, Kaçmaz said, "This specialization committee should be established immediately and work to solve the problems faced by children swiftly." (EMK/SD)