Human Rights of Children in Turkey: The Thin Line Between Sin and Crime

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Human Rights of Children in Turkey: The Thin Line Between Sin and Crime

Rather than blindly go along with the commonly held concepts of crime, criminality, punishment and detention, there is a need to formulate new concepts and new kinds of organization. Is it a crime for a wild animal to eat another animal because it is hungry? Is it a crime for human beings to kill and eat cows, sheep and chickens? When a little boy, following his natural instinct, steals food so that he might stay alive, is he committing a crime? The child’s act cannot be deemed a crime if the other two are not crimes.

Is it a criminal act for a child to fight on the streets to protect him or herself when the child has witnessed his or her father beat his mother, when he or she watches adults fight on the streets, and people kill each other so easily on television and in the cinema?

Could it be a crime when a child, desperate to escape his daily reality, becomes addicted to alcohol and attempts to rob an adult on the streets to feed his addiction?

In short, if we accept that attacks on the elderly and infirm, and abuses carried out within the justice system, are illegal, is it not equally criminal that preadolescent children are subjected to the same treatment?

The justice system in Turkey, despite all manner of revisions, will never be fair to children until it stops to avoid changing the determination of the concept of crimes against and by children.

In large cities, particularly Istanbul, the majority of the children who live on the streets, and their parents, have migrated from the countryside to the urban centers. These are the children of families without knowledge of urban culture and without support in coming to terms with the change. The metropolis is unsettling for all family members. Children, who observe their parents becoming estranged from each other, become themselves estranged from the parents to whom they owe their lives. The metropolitan experience for them is one of rootless alienation. When they’re forced to live out on the streets and risk everything to survive, they experience traumas through violence and sexual abuse. Subsequently they become alienated from their own bodies too. Their ability to tell right from wrong becomes confused and continues to waiver. They make up their own rules.

The only way out for these children is to strike out on their own on the streets, and this puts them at risk. They might try to suppress their loneliness by ganging up with other children, searching out places to sleep in tunnels or on waste sites. These children are the true victims of the metropolitan terror. But who or what is to blame: the metropolis or the government that rules it?

The vicious circle of alienation not only estranges children from their environment but also from each other. Detached from society, unheeded by the government, isolated from the compassion and love that family life could offer, they lose their fear of being hit or punched after being continuously violated and sexually abused. Rape itself becomes an accepted expression in the vocabulary of their lives. This normalization may cause them to violate and rape other children as many times as they can when there is an opportunity.

During my research, I came across the case of a boy nicknamed Finger who was just nine years old when I met and spoke with him. Unusually, he was not convicted of theft but of violating eleven little girls. He found nothing unnatural in having been raped while he served out his prison sentence. He’d been raped many times by adults as a street child, and it was a shock for him to learn about the value that virginity is accorded within the relationship between a man and a woman. Because he’d become alienated from his own body, his revenge was to corner and violate girls who lived in families, revealing his envy of their situation. He grew prouder of his championship score as the number of girls increased.

He didn’t care what he had been through; his main purpose was to increase the score. It meant nothing that he was beaten up countless times. He wasn’t able to relate what he’d done to the concept of crime. Those who’ve been traumatized as a result of the violence and rape out on the street feel no guilt, even when they cause trauma to others. For Finger, no punishment could be enough to dissuade him. His ambition was to grow up as soon as possible and do the same thing to men.

From time to time in Turkish prisons, children from juvenile wards are given the opportunity to attend lessons in religion, citizenship, sociology and psychology. It’s highly debatable whether these lessons do any good, since the children lack the ability to connect these subjects to their inner worlds. Imagine yourself sitting in a long row with prisoners serving time for petty crime and the other children from the juvenile wards. Picture a very serious and dedicated teacher of sociology, facing your group in one of the rooms in the prison, lecturing to you for about an hour or so about Alfred Adler’s thesis on forms of social behavior. Now put yourself in Finger’s position. Wouldn’t this lecture really be a meaningless torture unless you disrupt it?

The following incident occurred during a lecture on religion. An Imam was invited to give a talk to adults and juveniles about zina, meaning adultery in Islam, and specifically zina of the eye. After establishing, as he thought, that in the Islamic religion it is a sin to have zina of the eye, he explained in more detail what zina of the eye is. While walking on the street, for example, if you see a woman’s underwear amongst the laundry hanging from a balcony or window, that equates to zina of the eye with the owner of that underwear.

When the Imam paused, there was a momentary silence in the room. Then the street children from the juvenile ward started to object and shout “This is not a sin!” as they imagined their mothers’ or sisters’ underwear hanging on the line. They began to punch the Imam in the face. Hearing the shouts, guards entered, followed by soldiers and between them, they rescued the injured Imam. During the entire lecture and subsequent attack, the adult prisoners didn’t move a muscle but the children objected to and revolted against the idea of their mothers being sent to hell in sin. Even though these children, who’d been sent to prison by the justice system, did not understand the concept of crime, they could not accept that their mothers were considered to be sinful: the mothers who might well have kicked them out from their homes onto the streets.

Isn’t this contradiction proof enough of the need to redefine the concept of crime and punishment for children, informed by considering how children perceive the world?

There is an urgent need for the Turkish justice system to examine and reconsider acts performed by children at risk and relate them in different ways to acts by adults, to reformulate current notions of criminality.

Furthermore, these children’s acts should be analyzed by considering their conditioning and alienation from the metropolis, their families, and themselves, and taking into account their migration from the countryside to the city and the tensions produced by this.

The root of these acts of violence and destruction is not merely ideological, or the result of economic systems, or development in technologies, although these all play a part in fomenting violence. The basis lies in the relationships between children and their families during the short years of their childhood and, after they grow up, the relationships they manage to build with their own children. The experiences of the children of the street should serve as a stark reminder that if these family relationships continue to be fractured and abusive, then it will become impossible, in Turkey and elsewhere, to stop the violence and destruction.

Courtesy: EPOCH-End Physical Punishment of Children, Hitting children is wrong - and children are people too.

What do you mean by "physical punishment"?

     We mean any action which is meant to cause pain to a child, such as hitting, slapping, smacking, with a hand or with a slipper, strap, stick or other implement. We also include violent shaking and any kind of forcible imprisonment, such as being locked in a room or cupboard or tied in a cot.

What's so wrong with hitting children?

     Better to ask "what's right about it?" Everybody agrees it is morally wrong to settle arguments between adult people with blows. But children are people too. Why should they of all people lack equal protection from all forms of violence - particularly when they are among the most vulnerable physically? 

     Physical punishments are not only morally wrong, they don't work either. A whack on the bottom may stop children for that moment. But it won't stop them doing the same thing later on because being hit does not teach them anything useful. It doesn't teach them how you want them to behave, and it doesn't teach them to try to please you. Research evidence shows that children who have been slapped or hit are usually so overwhelmed with anger and hurt feelings that they cannot remember what they were punished for.

But surely you need to use physical force to keep children safe?

     There is all the difference in the world between using your strength to snatch a child away from a hot stove or prevent them running into a busy road, and intentionally causing pain as punishment.

Surely a tap on the legs doesn't count?

     Yet it does. Lots of parents `tap' babies, but many, many more smack four year year-olds. That's because hitting doesn't work except to relieve parents' feelings. If you let yourself smack your toddler for fiddling with the TV, what can you do when the toddler fiddles again except smack again - harder? And what can you do with the five year-old who refuses to stay in their room to `cool off' except lock the door...?

But is the ordinary kind of smacking that goes on in loving homes worth all this fuss?

     Yes it is - because violence really does breed violence and violence is a major problem in today's society. We are not saying that hitting at home is the only cause of that violence, but we are saying that ending hitting at home would help to reduce it. Children model a lot of their behaviour on their parents. Parents who use physical punishment are directly teaching their children that physical force is an acceptable way to get what you want. If we want less violent adults we have to bring them up believing that physical force is not acceptable.

But aren't ordinary physical punishment and child abuse two quite different things?

     When serious cases of child abuse are investigated, they are frequently shown to have started with occasional smacks given in the name of discipline which gradually escalated into tragedies. Current acceptance of physical punishment causes a dangerous confusion. Most of those responsible for seriously injuring children are found to have been physically punished in their childhood. 

     And even light blows can accidently cause serious injury to small children - eg `clips round the ear' have burst ear drums and permanently damaged hearing, and smacks catching a child off balance have led to falls and head injuries.

But chidlren need discipline; what should replace physical punishment?

     EPOCH certainly doesn't argue against discipline, or against consistent limits for children. The best responses to bad behaviour are always directly linked to it: parents' disapproval, irritation or anger, the removal of the toy or playmate the child is hurting, or the ending of the game or meal which is being ruined for everyone else. Rewards work better than punishments for children, just as they do for adults. There are already many parents who don't hit their children in any circumstances, but certainly believe in discipline and limits. You don't spoil a child by not hitting them.

How can you expect parents under stress, suffering from family poverty, unemployment and lack of proper child care support not to hit their children?

     EPOCH agrees that our society needs to do much more for those who bear the burden of child-rearing and it will support those campaigning for reforms. But there are no clear links between such social factors and the frequency or severity of hitting children. The fact is that while there continues to be confusion over what is acceptable, hitting children is likely to itself increase stress and violence within any family. 

     In any case, why should children and only children wait for equal protection from violence until we've sorted out these other major social ills?

If you stop parents hitting their children they'll resort to even worse forms of punishment - and what about emotional abuse anyway?

     Obviously other kinds of punishment can be harmful too. We concentrate on physical punishment because its harmful effects have been clearly demonstrated, because it is very frequently used, is clearly defined and because children are the only people in our society who are not protected from it. Changing attitudes to physical punishment, and hence to children will discourage other harmful forms of punishment.

Won't every parent sometimes lose his or her temper and hit their child?

     While hitting children remains as acceptable as it is today, the answer is probably `yes'. But do all adults sometimes lose their temper and hit their partner? No - because hitting other adults (or even pets) is beyond the pale. If hitting children was equally unacceptable, most parents would never do it and the few who sometimes did would regret it and try not to. That is all it would take to shift social attitudes towards a new respect for children as people.

Banning physical punishment - it does work

     Over five million European children are already protected from all physcial punishment in their home as well as in institutions. Five European countries - Sweden (in 1979), Finland (in 1983), Denmark (in 1985), Norway (in 1987) and Austria (in 1989) have adopted laws which prohibit parents hitting their children. The purpose in each case has been educational; to change attitudes, not to punish parents. There are no criminal penalties attached to the bans. The reforms have not led to a rush of children taking their parents to court over physical punishment, and numbers of children taken into care in Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries are low and reducing.

The law and physical punishment in the INDIA:

II. Kinds Of Punishments In Schools:


There are three types of corporal punishments in schools.

Physical Punishments: 

1. Making the children stand as a wall chair (Goda Kurchee in Telugu), 
2. Keeping the school bags on their heads, 
3. Making them stand for the whole day in the sun, 
4. Make the children kneel down and do the work and then enter the class room.
5. Making them stand on the bench, 
6. Making them raise hands, 
7. Hold a pencil in their mouth and stand, 
8. Holding their ears with hands passed under the legs, 
9. Tying of the children's hands, 
10. Making them to do sit-ups (Gunjeelu), 
11. Caning and pinching and 
12. Twisting the ears (Chevulu pindadam)

Emotional Punishments:

1. Slapping by the opposite sex.
2. Scolding abusing and humiliating.
3. Label the child according to his or her misbehaviour and sent him or her around the school.
4. Make them stand on the back of the class and to complete the work.
5. Suspending them for a couple of days
6. Pinning paper on their back and labeling them "I am a fool", "I am a donkey" etc.
7. Teacher takes the child to every class she goes and humiliates the child.
8. Removing the shirts of the boys.

Negative Reinforcement:

1. Detention during the break and lunch.
2. Locking them in a dark room.
3. Call for parents or asking the children to bring explanatory letters from the parents.
4. Sending them home or keeping the children outside the gate.
5. Making the children sit on the floor on the classroom.
6. Making the child clean the premises.
7. Making the child run around the building or in the playground.
8. Sending the children to principals.
9. Making them to teach in the class.
10. Making them to stand till the teacher comes.
11. Giving oral warnings and letters in the diary or calendar.
12. Threatening to give TC for the child.
13. Asking them to miss games or other activities.
14. Deducting marks.
15. Treating the three late comings equal to one absent.
16. Giving excessive imposition.
17. Make the children pay fines.
18. Not allowing them into the class.
19. Sitting on the floor for one period, day, week and month.
20. Placing black marks on their disciplinary charts.

Normal range of punishments, which continue unabated, are caning, beating knuckles with stick or steel scale, kneeling down, standing on the bench and so on. Wall chairs (sitting as if on the chair without any one against the wall for half-an-hour to one hour), wall chairs plus a school bag on the head or thighs which cause more physical pain, running ten to twenty rounds around the school building or in the ground and sit-ups numbering hundreds are other range of punishments. Writing impositions for more than fifty times within a short time, which is physically not possible to complete, is a new type of punishment. If an English medium students talks in Telugu, he or she will be made to write, "I do not speak in Telugu" for fifty to hundred times, a mental punishment too. 

Juvenile Justice Act, 2000:

Section 23 of new Juvenile Justice Act, 2000 provides punishment for cruelty to juvenile or child. Whoever, having the actual charge of or control over, a juvenile or the child, assaults, abandons, exposes or willfully neglects the juvenile or causes or procures him to be assaulted, abandoned, exposed or neglected in a manner likely to cause such juvenile or the child unnecessarily mental or physical suffering shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to six months, or fine, or with both.

This section has no exceptions to exempt parents or teachers. Though it is intended to punish cruelty by those in authority, it equally applies to parents and teachers also. The whole purpose of the Juvenile Justice Act 2000 is to translate the objectives and rights enshrined in Convention on Child Rights which include separation of juveniles in conflict with law from ordinary judicial proceedings to avoid corporal punishment.