Turkish prosecutors have closed an investigation into allegations that two Ukrainian orphans, then aged 15 and 16, were repeatedly raped and impregnated by Turkish hotel staff while housed in a seaside resort under a humanitarian program.
The allegations are detailed in a March 2024 report signed by 11 Ukrainian officials that was obtained by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, an international investigative journalism network, and recently disclosed by Ukrainian investigative news outlet Slidstvo.Info
The report is based on the inspection of a hotel in the Beldibi area of Antalya that housed a group of orphaned and institutionalized children evacuated from war-torn eastern Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. They were placed in the hotel under the “Childhood Without War” project managed by Ukrainian businessman Ruslan Shostak’s private foundation.
The inspection team included representatives of the Ukrainian parliament’s human rights commissioner, the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Military Administration, Turkey’s ombudsman institution and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
The report alleged that staff members formed relationships with the girls and that some Ukrainian adult caregivers were aware and failed to intervene.
One of the hotel employees, described as a cook, told Slidstvo.Info he went to the girl’s room despite rules forbidding staff from visiting the children, according to the published account. The report said both girls were sent back to Ukraine after their pregnancies became known and gave birth without support from social services. One later attempted suicide.
The Turkish Ministry of Family and Social Services, which states on its website that “services in hotels hosting Ukrainian children are monitored and controlled” by provincial staff, filed a criminal complaint after discovering the pregnancies. Turkish prosecutors nevertheless closed the investigation for “insufficient evidence.” An appeal lodged by the ministry’s own lawyers was rejected. Ukraine shut down its parallel probe in June 2025 on the same grounds.
The report also described inadequate medical care and emergency support in the hotel, along with poor living conditions including limited access to drinking water, insufficient clean bedding and fire safety problems.
The case has raised questions among child protection advocates about oversight in emergency humanitarian programs and about whether vulnerable children in Turkey can obtain an effective remedy when serious allegations are documented but investigations end without charges.
“No one has been held accountable — neither the perpetrators, nor the caregivers who enabled the abuse, nor the authorities who failed to supervise,” Dr. Selmin Cansu Demir, a Turkish children’s rights lawyer who examined the case files said. “Under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Council of Europe’s Lanzarote Convention, Turkey has an absolute duty to prevent sexual violence against every child on its territory and to conduct effective investigations. That duty was breached.”
The Turkish presidency’s Directorate of Communications, through its Disinformation Combat Center, denied the claims in a statement carried by Turkish media, describing the allegations as misleading and saying children were placed in hotels selected by a Ukrainian foundation with Ukrainian personnel responsible for daily care.
The statement said Turkey offered to house the children in facilities run by the Ministry of Family and Social Services but that the offer was not accepted by Ukrainian authorities. It also said the ministry filed a criminal complaint once it learned of the abuse allegations after the children returned to Ukraine.
