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Prostitution rife in Turkey: Report
One in every 350 Turkish women faces the threat of having to work in
the sex sector or of being sexually exploited.
July 19, 2004
Though prostitution is legal in Turkey, most of the women working in the
industry are not registered and many are forced to ply their trade against
their will, according to a report released on the weekend.
According to s study conducted by the Ankara Chamber of Commerce (ATO), there
are approximately 100,000 women involved in the sex trade in Turkey, with the
trade generating some $3.0 to $4.0 billion annually. However, the ATO report
claimed that only 3,000 of the female sex workers were employed legally in
Turkey’s 56 registered brothels, with another 12,000 registered to work outside
the brothel system.
The ATO report, entitled “Lifeless Women”, claims that there could be up to
100,000 women involved in the sex trade, with at least 30,000 waiting to work
in the brothels of Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara. Many of these women work on the
streets as they are not able to gain the protection of working in a registered
brothel.
There are an estimated 6,000 women working illegally as prostitutes in the
south eastern province of Diyarbakir alone, the report said.
There are at least 500 child sex workers in Istanbul alone, with some as young
girls as 12 working as prostitutes, the report said.
Most of the child sex slaves are primary school graduates. Sex workers are
mostly driven to prostitution by their husbands (30 percent), and by their
parents (10 percent).
The ATO survey says that many sex workers are subject to abuse, oppression, and
condemnation. Poverty is main reason that women enter prostitution, the report
said.
Apart from Turkish women in the sex industry the ATO report said there were sex
workers from Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Belarus engaged in
prostitution in the country. Unlike their Turkish colleagues, many of these
women are well educated.
Sinan Aygun, the chairman of the ATO, said that the spread of the unregulated
sex market was due to a decade of lax administration on the part of state
authorities.
“The sex workers are not naked but the king naked,” he said.
The best way to provide an alternative for women in the sex trade would be to
offer them the chance to gain employment in other sectors, Aygun said. This
would require the provision of education and assistance to the poor including
social security in order to help women avoid being forces into prostitution, he
said.
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