[women-rights] Support the campaign to eliminate gender discrimination in the Turkish Penal Code

CALL FOR SUPPORT: THE CAMPAIGN TO ELIMINATE GENDER DISCRIMINATION AND
HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN THE TURKISH PENAL CODE

Dear friends,

Since 2002, the Women's Platform on the Turkish Penal Code, coordinated by
Women for Women's Human Rights (WWHR) – New Ways, has been extensively
lobbying for a holistic reform of the penal code from a gender perspective
and for the removal of all discriminatory provisions from the penal code
draft law. The platform, consisting of more than 30 NGOs nationwide, has
succeeded in getting accepted the majority of women's demands included in
the draft law. However discriminatory provisions remain in the draft law,
violating human rights in the domain of sexual and reproductive rights in
Turkey.

The Turkish Penal Code Draft Law is expected to be voted in the Grand
National Assembly on September 14th, 2004. We kindly ask you to fax and
widely circulate the action alert (please find below and attached) to the
Prime Minister, Minister of Justice, Minister of Foreign Affairs and the
head of the opposition party, calling for the amendment of the remaining
discriminatory provisions from the draft law.

The Draft Law still fails to effectively penalize women's human rights
violations such as honor killings and virginity testing and falls short of
prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. Although abortion
was allowed up to 12 weeks in the original draft law, the Justice
Commission reduced this period to 10 weeks. The current provisions leaves
room to penalize consensual sexual relations between youth aged 15-18.

Please support our campaign by writing to the Turkish government and MPs.
Please see the sample action letter below.

We thank you for your support.

Pinar Ilkkaracan

Women for Women's Human Rights (WWHR) – New Ways / WOMEN'S PLATFORM FOR THE
REFORM OF THE TURKISH PENAL CODE

e-mail: wwhrist@superonline.com     Tel: +90 – 212 - 251 00 29 / Fax: +90
212 251 00 65 www.wwhr.org



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Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister, Republic of Turkey
Fax no: +90 312 419 71 01
Mr. Cemil Cicek, Minister of Justice, Republic of Turkey
Fax no: +90 312 417 71 13
Mr. Abdullah Gül, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Turkey
Fax no: +90 312 419 16 32
Mr. Deniz Baykal, Republican People's Party
Fax no: +90 312 468 09 96

We are deeply concerned that the Justice Commission of the Turkish
Parliament has refused to respond to women's demands and has failed to make
the necessary amendments to the Turkish Penal Code Draft Law in order to
eradicate discrimination against women. As it stands, the Penal Code Draft
Law continues to legitimize human rights violations, and thus fails to
comply with the constitutional principle of gender equality and global
human rights norms.

The Turkish Penal Code Reform is a crucial opportunity for Turkey to take a
step further in ensuring gender equality and affirming its commitment to
protecting the freedom and rights of its citizens fully as an egalitarian
and democratic state of law. To this end, we strongly urge you and the
members of the parliament to make the following amendments to the draft law:
To replace "killings in the name of customary law" with "honor killings" as
an aggravating circumstance for homicides in order to prevent honor killing
perpetrators from receiving sentence reductions in all cases;
To explicitly and effectively ban and criminalize virginity testing in all
cases and to penalize all kinds of genital examination performed without
the necessary legal authorization or against the woman's consent;
To penalize "discrimination based on sexual orientation" which was removed
later, and to amend the article to effectively penalize any violation of
political, sexual and economic rights based on discrimination;
To re-extend the abortion period up to 12 weeks instead of 10 weeks as was
initially stated in the original Draft Law;
To remove the article penalizing consensual sexual relations between young
people of 15 – 18 years of age;
To amend the "obscenity" article by clearly defining acts of "obscenity" in
order to prevent threat to freedom of expression, invasion of privacy and
discrimination based on sexual orientation.

We strongly urge you to take the necessary action to ascertain the
amendment of these discriminatory provisions in the Turkish Penal Code
Draft Law.

Sincerely yours,



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