1,914 Children Officially in Prison in Turkey

Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ responded a parliamentarian inquiry of Pervin Buldan from People’s Democratic Party (HDP) about the children in prisons and the pressure they are experiencing.

Bekir Bozdağ stated a total of 1,914 children including 472 convicts and 1,442 prisoners were in jail. He also stated 353 children stayed with their convict or prisoner mothers.

As a response to the official inquiry, Bozdağ recorded children’s average period of detention is 110 days.

Most children are prisoners

Last year on their interview to bianet, Zafer Kıraç and Mustafa Eren from Civil Society Association in the Criminal Execution System (CISST) said that approximately 2000 children were in prisons and 1608 of whom were prisoners, one quarter of whom were convicts.

71 complaints

Bozdağ continued that Justice Ministry has received a total of 71 complaint letters on grounds of the allegations about maltreatment of child convicts or prisoners in penal institutions since 2002. He stated these complaints included the allegations of battery, threat, insult, arbitrary treatment, the violation of telephone and petition rights, the prevention of social activities and indifference to health issues.

Unanswered questions

Stating there is no sufficiently detailed statistical data about other matters signified in the question, Bozdağ did not answered Buldan’s question whether there were any children that lost their lives since 2002 in prisons.

Another unanswered question was how many of the children in prison were arrested for political crimes. (YÖ/YY/MEV/BM)

* Click here to read the article in Turkish.