Turkey: Three-plus children for the economy

27 January 2025
Our new series returns to our Welcome to Gilead campaign, exploring global restrictions on women’s reproductive rights. This edition revisits the chapter on Turkey from our 2021 Welcome to Gilead report.

Like China and Iran, Turkey is no stranger to using reproductive policy to control population size. Following its War of Independence in the early 20th century, Turkish leaders instituted pronatal policies in a nationalist attempt to replace war casualties. Contraception, sterilisation, and even sharing contraception information was made illegal, and abortion was codified as a crime against “racial integrity”.

In the 1960s, however, Turkey joined many other countries in realising that population growth was a threat to economic development and changed its tune, providing free contraception and later legalising abortion. Again, it was economic growth, not women’s rights, that drove the agenda.

Continued: https://populationmatters.org/news/2025/01/turkey-three-plus-children-for-the-economy/

27.01.2025

Commentary

Justice and Development Party

Turkey – Diyarbakır hospitals impose de facto ban on abortion

Public and private hospitals in Turkey’s southeastern Diyarbakır refuse to carry out abortion operations, arguing it is “forbidden.” Abortion on demand has been legal until the 10th week of pregnancy since 1983 in Turkey.

Sunday July 14 2024

Public and private hospitals in Turkey’s southeastern Diyarbakır province refuse to carry out abortion operations on demand, despite being legal.

In Turkey, abortion has been legal under Articles 5 and 6 of the Law on Population Planning since May 27, 1983, and is subject to the consent of the pregnant until the 10th week of pregnancy. Although the right to abortion on demand is guaranteed by law, in practice women may face various obstacles in the country.

Continued: https://www.duvarenglish.com/diyarbakir-hospitals-impose-de-facto-ban-on-abortion-news-64662

14.07.2024

News

abortion in Turkey

Health and Social Services Workers’ Trade Union

Law on Population Planning

Women's Human Rights Association

Turkish top court rules rights violated in delayed abortion case

Turkey’s top appeals court found a rights violation in the case of the woman whose abortion request was delayed past the 20-week legal limit by a prolonged legal process.

Friday June 07 2024
Duvar English

Turkey’s Constitutional Court (AYM) on June 6 accepted the application of A.J., who was sexually assaulted in 2019 and unable to terminate her pregnancy due to prolonged legal processes, and ruled that her rights had been violated.

The decision was published in yesterday's issue of the Official Gazette. The AYM's ruling highlighted that the Chief Public Prosecutor's Office in Turkey’s southeastern Urfa province failed to consider the 20-week legal limit for abortion. The court emphasized that future cases should take this limit into account.

Continued: https://www.duvarenglish.com/turkish-top-court-rules-rights-violated-in-delayed-abortion-case-news-64476#google_vignette

07.06.2024

News

rape and abortion

Turkey Constitutional Court

Legal but not accessible: abortion in Turkey from an ethical perspective

By Gender DSC
23/11/2020

Can abortion just be a medical decision?
As has been reported by Amnesty International, “Around 47,000 women die as a result of unsafe abortions every year.” The testimony of Rajat Khosla, Amnesty International’s Senior Director of Research and Advocacy shows the peril of the siege over women’s bodies. Although the political authorities try to establish their presence under the subject of religious sensitivity with the slogan that “abortion is murder”, many women have died as a result of the operations carried out under improper conditions.

In countries where abortion is restricted or prohibited, women who are wealthy have the chance to get an abortion abroad and return to their countries, while the poor have to terminate their pregnancy using dangerous methods such as clothes hangers, as in Argentina.

Continued: https://diem25.org/legal-but-not-accessible-abortion-turkey-from-ethical-perspective/

Abortion increasingly hard to access in Turkey

By FARIBA NAWA
Oct 6, 2020
Listen: 6:43 podcast

When Sevilay, a 38-year-old, stay-at-home mom in Istanbul, learned she was pregnant with a third child, she agonized over what to do.

“I became very upset when I learned about my
pregnancy. I wondered whether I could do it or not. I was already having a hard
time with two kids. There was nobody that could help me.”

Continued: https://news.wbfo.org/post/abortion-increasingly-hard-access-turkey

06.10.2020

Featured

News

abortion story

anti-choice restrictions

Turkey – Restriction on access to abortion is human rights violation: Top court

September 11 2020
ANKARA

Turkey’s top court has ruled that a woman’s rights were violated when she was denied an abortion for a pregnancy that was the result of sexual assault.

A 17-year-old young woman got pregnant as a result of sexual assault in 2017 and the survivor’s family complained about the perpetrator in the southern province of Mersin, according to the Constitutional Court’s decision.

Continued: https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/restriction-on-access-to-abortion-is-human-rights-violation-top-court-158182

11.09.2020

Turkey Constitutional Cout

‘Turkey should step up efforts on zero target for mother deaths’

'Turkey should step up efforts on zero target for mother deaths'

Barçın Yinanç - NAIROBI
November 18 2019

Professor Ayşe Akın received a United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) award last week in Nairobi, Kenya at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICDP25) for her contribution to the health of women at the global and national levels since 1994, when the first ICDP took place in Cairo, which she had also attended.

Can you give us an overview of Turkey’s population policies?

The new republic’s population was 13 million at the end of the war of liberation, when a lot of men had lost their lives. Modern Turkey founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk had endorsed a pro-natal policy, but he has no forceful statement on the record.

Continued: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-should-step-up-efforts-on-zero-target-for-mother-deaths-148798

Turkey slammed after launching terror investigations into those who have had abortions

Turkey slammed after launching terror investigations into those who have had abortions

Steve Sweeney
Tuesday, September 10, 2019

HEALTH professionals in Turkey have hit out after security services demanded lists of the names of all women who had abortions in Istanbul between January 2017 and May 2019 as part of “terror investigations.”

Istanbul’s Provincial Directorate of Security demanded the confidential information by September 13 in a letter sent to every public and private hospital across the city.

Continued: https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/turkey-slammed-after-launching-terror-investigations-those-who-have-had-abortions#.XX-jh9EZkG1.facebook

Turkey’s women face dangerous conditions to obtain legal abortion

Turkey's women face dangerous conditions to obtain legal abortion
Women seeking an abortion in Turkey face considerable danger and many hurdles. While the procedure is legal, experts say in reality there is a de facto ban, believed to be orchestrated by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Date 27.01.2019
Author Burcu Karakas

"I thought I'd go to some sort of hospital. But instead, it was an apartment on the second floor of a three-story building. A man with a cigarette in hand opened the door. I entered an apartment with a living room and kitchen. The bathroom in what apparently was the parents' bedroom had been converted into an abortion room. The operating table was filthy and covered in blood."

Horror takes hold of Gul as she describes the place in Istanbul's Alibeykoy district where she went to have her pregnancy terminated. What she encountered was one of Turkey’s illegal abortion clinics, often housed in converted apartments despite the procedure being legal in Turkey.

Continued: https://www.dw.com/en/turkeys-women-face-dangerous-conditions-to-obtain-legal-abortion/a-47257680

Turkish court rules for girl’s abortion, releases rape suspect

Turkish court rules for girl’s abortion, releases rape suspect
December 13 2017
AFYONKARAHİSAR

Turkish court rules for girl’s abortion, releases rape suspect

An 11-year-old pregnant girl has undergone abortion after a court ruling allowed her in the Central Anatolian province of Afyonkarahisar, Doğan News Agency reported on Dec. 13.

The girl turned out to be two and a half months pregnant when she complained of stomach ache after going to a public hospital on Nov. 7.

The hospital then reported the situation to the police.

Continued at source: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-court-rules-for-girls-abortion-releases-rape-suspect-124051

13.12.2017