Staying faithful in Turkey

While the main purpose of the reforms may be to bring Turkey more into line with the nations of the EU, critics say the changes regarding adultery and in a number of other areas will actually turn back the clock in terms of women’s rights.

Radio Netherlands spoke to Liz Amado, a women’s rights campaigner in Istanbul, and asked her how she views the proposed criminalization of adultery.

"This is part of other issues of questioning the penal code regarding secularism and religion, and headscarves, etcetera. It’s sort of become a bargaining point between the government and the opposition party. They’re basically manipulating and violating women’s human rights in order to do so."

RN: "But why exactly are you opposed to making adultery illegal?"

"The problem with adultery laws is that, first of all we don’t believe that adultery should be a crime, but even when it is, it doesn’t apply to men and women equally and – in most cases – it’s used to the disadvantage of women. For example, if a woman is caught or even suspected of adultery then she can be prosecuted for it. And it can be used by men or members of the family to take women’s children away, to put them in jail or it could be a legitimisation to name the woman, let’s say, as dishonourable and lead her to be threatened or killed by her husband or family."

RN: "How often does that happen?"

"Honour killings are, unfortunately, still a widespread human rights violation in Turkey. Over the past year, at least 10 cases were covered by the media, and these are only the ones we hear of in public. There are lot which probably do not reach us."

RN: "The ruling AK party in Turkey has tried to portray itself as secular. Do you think that this new adultery law reveals the true face – a truly Islamic face – of this government?"

"We wouldn’t call it Islamic, we just feel it’s a conservative religious-right ideology. That is: on the façade, they are saying they are promoting equality and women’s human rights and eradication of gender discrimination, but when it comes to reality they’re actually showing a resistance towards establishing real equality. They did the same thing with the constitutional amendment back in April, where the women’s movement lobbied extensively for positive discrimination to grant women equal opportunities. What they [actually] did was insert such a vague clause in the constitution that it won’t do anything in reality to help realise gender equality."

"With the Turkish penal code they’re doing the same. It’s not only this new adultery proposal; they’re doing the same thing with honour killings or virginity testing. For example, we demanded that virginity testing be banned and criminalized in all cases. What they did was, they put in the draft law an article saying those who order virginity testing without proper authority will be penalised, but they’re not penalising the medical personnel who perform the testing, which still leaves room for private medicine offices or doctors to perform the test and not get penalised."