Say Yes, Spring 2006: Facts of Life …

UNICEF argues that risky behaviour begun in adolescence can lead to enormous public health costs and human suffering -- a compelling reason for investing in adolescent health. Policy makers, service providers and parents should take note that risks to adolescent health and development often stem as much from the prevailing attitudes and mores of society as they do from the behaviour of adolescents themselves.

REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH

Access to life-skills education including communication and negotiation skills as well as HIV/AIDS is limited for Turkish adolescents since they rarely have adequate opportunities to discuss such sensitive issues with parents, guardians or teachers. Sexual relations are very much the preserve of the institution of marriage. The latest Turkey Demographic and Health Survey (TDHS) says that:

In Turkey, marriage is very important from a demographic perspective, because, besides being prevalent throughout the country, almost all births occur within marriage. Therefore, age at first marriage is a significant indicator since it represents the onset of a woman’s exposure to the risk of pregnancy.

Although there is no evidence to contradict this assertion, the implicit assumption that adolescents in this rapidly developing country will continue to abstain from sexual relations before marriage gives cause for concern: the link between greater sexual autonomy and higher levels of economic and social development have been proven time and again the world over.

Recognising this, the Government, with the support of UNICEF, has put in place strategies to address adolescent health needs including comprehensive life skills-based education. The Family and Child Training Programme (FACT) has been reconfigured as My Family in the light of lessons learned from the previous 2001-2005 Country Programme (CPAP) and training will be provided to families with children between the ages of 7 and 19 years of age. The Ministry of National Education (MONE) has also recently included HIV/AIDS in the new primary school curriculum for grades 6-8.

The issue of HIV/AIDS appears to be something of a ‘blind alley’ in general: although the number of HIV/AIDS infections is low at 2,254 reported cases since 1985, the actual figure is believed to be much higher. Data on levels of awareness is both vague and incomplete.

The TDHS reports that awareness of AIDS is high yet levels of knowledge on how to protect oneself from STDs and HIV/AIDS remain very low. Of those questioned on methods of avoiding HIV/AIDS, 31% did not know of AIDs or that it can be avoided and only 22% understood that condom use offered protection. In general, older married women were more aware of HIV/AIDS than younger women. Unfortunately the TDHS was not designed to determine what men and boys understand of the issue -- without an accurate sample that reflects levels of knowledge of both genders, a thorough assessment of the situation in Turkey is not possible and the issue becomes more urgent with each passing day.

Nevertheless, given that the TDHS sample group is composed of women between the ages of 15 and 49, the responses indicate a degree of ignorance of the issue amongst mothers -- the primary care givers in households -- that would imply adolescents have to find out about these important reproductive health issues elsewhere.

CHILD MARRIAGE

The health hazards of early pregnancy that adolescent girls endure as a consequence of marrying before they have matured physically are of particular concern. According to the TDHS, women who have not completed high school or further education tend to have at least two more children than their more educated peers. Among those who have had little or no primary education, 15% have given birth between the ages of 15 and 19 years compared to 3% of their peers with a high school education. Of adolescents who had begun childbearing at the time of the most recent TDHS, the percentage had dropped from 10% in 1998 to 8% in 2003 -- 2% of whom were pregnant with their first child.

The custom of child marriage, a declining but still common practice amongst the poorer, less educated population, is of course related to the high incidence of early childbearing and concomitant risks of illness and maternal mortality amongst adolescent girls. The custom seeks to protect the maturing sexuality of girls in arranged unions -- often with older men and without their free and full consent which, as children, they are not in a position to give.

Although children are prohibited by law from marrying, inadequate birth registration procedures allow families sufficient leeway to give their adolescent daughters in marriage without fear of censure. Furthermore many rural communities consider an imam nikah or religious ceremony sufficient to the purpose and as a result unions often remain unregistered and essentially invisible to the state.

Child marriage is essentially motivated by fear that a girl’s family honour will be ruined if her virtue is compromised in any way. This same fear gives rise to the issue of honour killings -- a persistent threat to adolescent girls and adult women alike. Hundreds of Turkish women die each year by way of reparation for their family’s damaged reputation according to a recent report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), The Dynamics of Honour Killings in Turkey.

The practice of child marriage is contrary to the principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in that it is against the best interests of the child and undoubtedly hinders her right to development. It is also diametrically opposed to the third Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to promote gender equality and empower women since it refuses the adolescent girls’ right to develop and mature as an individual, effectively trafficks her under the guise of marriage in exchange for mal (a dowry), excludes her from the educational system and affronts her womanhood with the implication that she is not to be trusted on the matter of her own sexuality.

Article 16 of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) states that:

The betrothal and the marriage of a child shall have no legal effect, and all necessary action, including legislation, shall be taken to specify a minimum age for marriage and to make the registration of marriages in an official registry compulsory.

UNICEF argues that the capacity of adolescent girls to decide their own futures needs to be increased and that this will not happen until the threat of murder and violence as a panacea to the challenged honour of families is removed.

Download the The Dynamics of Honour Killings in Turkey report [PDF 557KB] from the Women’s UN Programme and Network.

Download the Turkey Demographic and Health Survey, 2003 from Hacettepe University, Ankara.

Previous page  |  Next page

ARCHIVE

Search UNICEF Turkey
   

• Advanced Search

Download this issue in pdf format. [PDF 1.3MB]

 * How to use RSS …