Following the murder of an 8-year-old girl in Diyarbakır in August, children’s rights advocates have expressed deep concern over the safety of children in Turkey, saying the incident was not an isolated case, the Deutsche Welle (DW) news agency reported.
According to rights advocates, policies to protect children from harm are insufficient and there is a culture of impunity protecting perpetrators from serving prison sentences. Furthermore, in some cultures children are undervalued and their deaths are played down, making them vulnerable to serious physical abuse and even murder.
Halis Dokgöz, a forensic doctor and director of the Child Protection Center at Mersin University, said in conservative and tight-knit families perpetrators are often those people closest to the child.
In the case of 8-year-old Narin Güran, whose body was discovered in a creek near her village in early September, her closest relatives were the main suspects. The little girl’s mother and one of her brothers were arrested on charges of voluntary manslaughter. Her uncle and aunt were also arrested on similar charges.
Narin Güran is only one of many children to fall victim to violence. According to a report by the FISA Child Rights Center at least 23 children died as a result of physical violence, while 17 others died under suspicious circumstances in 2024. However, Turkish authorities have no official data on killed or missing children since 2016, which children rights advocates say is very concerning.
“To develop a solution we need data,” said Ezgi Koman from FISA. She added that the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child had been appealing for years to Turkish authorities to release information on the number of missing children.
Koman explained that if the government was withholding information from the public, the only reason could be that the numbers were very high. In that case, the public would expect authorities to take child protection seriously and develop stronger policies for the prevention of harm.
Expressing similar concerns, Dokgöz said experts such as forensic doctors, social workers, police and psychologists had no information for developing strategies to prevent child abuse and violence toward children. “We only know about cases that have been made public,” he said. “Even then, people are only interested in the murderer, but the authorities need to come up with sustainable solutions to all kinds of violence towards children before they are murdered.”
Sahin Antakyalıoğlu, the coordinator of the Child Advocates Network, agrees that current policies and regulations are not enough to protect children. Children need access to a hotline, which they can call if they feel unsafe, he said. Moreover, they need to be taught about abuse, bullying and possibly dangerous situations at school.
Since the murder of Narin Güran, many public figures have expressed concern over child safety and the authorities’ lack of attention to the matter. Journalists such as Fatih Altaylı have said that currently there are thousands of children who are missing. There is no way to know if any of these children are still alive.
Although an opposition politician has submitted a parliamentary motion addressing the Ministry of Family and Social Affairs demanding a thorough investigation into missing child cases in the country, the ministry has not responded.
