Turkish ‘Progress’: Six-Year-Old Girl Married by Her Sheik Father

Chris

Administrator
Staff member
Turkish ‘Progress’: Six-Year-Old Girl Married by Her Sheik Father
By Burak Bekdil

Originally Published by the Gatestone Institute.

No doubt, Turkey is more secular and modern than Afghanistan and Iran. But that is not good enough news for Turkish girls and women.

A total of 327 women were murdered by their husbands, ex-husbands, fiancés and partners, between January 1 and November 11, 2022, according to the Turkish Federation of Women’s Association. The Islamist government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan should be proud.

Although they are now “ex-allies,” Erdogan, when he was the prime minister of Turkey in 2007, elected as president his long-time, staunchest ally at the time, Abdullah Gul, a fellow Islamist. Gul reportedly married his wife, Hayrunnisa, when he was 30 years old and she was 14.

The marriage of underage girls and women is part of Islamist culture, including in Turkey.

In March 2021, under pressure from pious Muslims, Erdogan announced that Turkey was pulling out of the “Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence,” effective July 1, 2021. The accord is better known as the Istanbul Convention after Turkey’s biggest city where, in 2011, it received signatures, including Erdogan’s.

“Turkey’s decision to ditch a landmark international treaty to tackle violence against women and girls, could significantly set back efforts to tackle the problem,” said Reem Alsalem, a senior UN-appointed independent rights expert.

Officially, around one out of four women in Turkey has suffered physical or sexual abuse from their partners, according to latest available government data from a 2014 survey, said Alsalem in a statement. There are also likely “hundreds of femicides” every year, she added, pointing to serious underreporting of the issue, owing to a lack of confidence in protection mechanisms, widespread impunity and gender-related bias and discrimination.

This is the gloomy background in a country where women won the right to vote in national elections in 1934, ten years before French women. In 1935, 18 women became Turkish MPs, or 4.6% of the parliament.

That was secular Turkey.

Today, in Turkey, the driving force is political Islam. On November 25, protestors gathered in several provinces to commemorate the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. They were met with a heavy police presence and violent crackdown. Several women were detained in the protests, including 20 journalists. “We are not allowed to leave the [police] blockade,” journalist Sultan Eylem Keleş wrote in a tweet.

This is a picture of Turkish “progress” between 1934 and 2022.

It is only the tip of the iceberg. As Erdogan’s political Islam has poisoned the uneducated masses’ freedom over the past two decades, families have turned “medieval” in their social life. The prominent Turkish columnist Yilmaz Ozdil compiled a list of crimes committed in Erdogan’s Turkey in just the past few years:

– An 11-year-old girl, who had been married by an imam, gave birth: Bolu province.
– A 12-year-old girl gave birth under a fake ID that showed her age as 18: Gaziantep province.
– A 12-year-old girl gave birth: Izmir province.
– A girl named Kader, or “fate in English.” She did not have good fate. She was forcibly married at 12, became a mother at 13 and committed suicide at 14: Siirt province.
– A girl was married, at 13, to a 40-year-old man. She ran away after severe violence from the husband. Her family rejected her. At 17 she, with her three children, had no place to live: Ordu province.
– A 15-year-old girl was forcibly married. She took refuge at a police station: Sakarya province.
– A notary public was caught endorsing the illegal marriage of a 14-year-old girl: Tekirdag province.
– A 12-year-old girl, who was forcibly married, appeared to be four months pregnant: Tokat province:
– A 16-year-old girl who had been married off by her family committed suicide by throwing herself under the train: Adana province.
– A 16-year-old married girl jumped from the seventh floor of a building: Konya province.
– There was a case of a girl of 14 being forcibly married to a man of 70, father of five and grandfather of nine.
– The Kanuni Sultan Suleyman Hospital in Istanbul reported to have received 115 pregnant girls under 15 in just five months. The hospital said it admits 500 pregnant girls in one year.

Before Erdogan came to power, civil marriage was compulsory in Turkey, and conducting a religious marriage before the civil one was punishable by a prison sentence. Under Erdogan, Turkish courts legalized religious marriages and reduced the legal age of consent for sex to 12 years of age.

Against this backdrop, even Turkey was shocked at news that a prominent Islamic sheik, the leader of a religious order fiercely devoted to Erdogan, had married off his six-year-old daughter to a 29-year-old disciple. Six! The girl had been forced into sex and became a mother at 14. She complained to the prosecutor’s office, but Erdogan’s authorities apparently did not want to bother the sheik. As she became an adult, she collected evidence of abuse, made it public, and only then the judiciary took action. Initially the court decided to try the suspects without detention, but under huge public pressure, the court detained both the father and husband. The father, in a statement, said that he was answerable only to Allah, not to a court.

Hey, West! Time to get to know your NATO partner. Erdogan’s Minister of Family and Social Services, Derya Yanık (a woman), claimed that violence against women and child abuse are not the subject of politics because they are “human nature issues and can be seen in every society.”

What is the link between these criminal acts and Erdogan’s government? First, the sheik who married off his six-year-old daughter heads a foundation linked to the influential radical Islamist Ismailaga community. Second, the Ismailaga community is one of many that fall under the umbrella of the Naqshbandi-Khalidi order, a branch of Sunni Islam of which Erdogan is said to have been a follower. Third, the funeral of the Ismailaga sect’s longtime leader earlier this year was attended by Erdogan and Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu.

There are civilized and medieval worlds in the 21st century — and there are medieval leaders dressed in suits and ties who pretend to belong to the civilized world.

Burak Bekdil, one of Turkey’s leading journalists, was recently fired from the country’s most noted newspaper after 29 years, for writing in Gatestone what is taking place in Turkey. He is a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

https://www.raptureforums.com/islam/turkish-progress-six-year-old-girl-married-by-her-sheik-father/
 

GotGrace

Well-Known Member
Turkish ‘Progress’: Six-Year-Old Girl Married by Her Sheik Father
By Burak Bekdil

Originally Published by the Gatestone Institute.

No doubt, Turkey is more secular and modern than Afghanistan and Iran. But that is not good enough news for Turkish girls and women.

A total of 327 women were murdered by their husbands, ex-husbands, fiancés and partners, between January 1 and November 11, 2022, according to the Turkish Federation of Women’s Association. The Islamist government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan should be proud.

Although they are now “ex-allies,” Erdogan, when he was the prime minister of Turkey in 2007, elected as president his long-time, staunchest ally at the time, Abdullah Gul, a fellow Islamist. Gul reportedly married his wife, Hayrunnisa, when he was 30 years old and she was 14.

The marriage of underage girls and women is part of Islamist culture, including in Turkey.

In March 2021, under pressure from pious Muslims, Erdogan announced that Turkey was pulling out of the “Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence,” effective July 1, 2021. The accord is better known as the Istanbul Convention after Turkey’s biggest city where, in 2011, it received signatures, including Erdogan’s.

“Turkey’s decision to ditch a landmark international treaty to tackle violence against women and girls, could significantly set back efforts to tackle the problem,” said Reem Alsalem, a senior UN-appointed independent rights expert.

Officially, around one out of four women in Turkey has suffered physical or sexual abuse from their partners, according to latest available government data from a 2014 survey, said Alsalem in a statement. There are also likely “hundreds of femicides” every year, she added, pointing to serious underreporting of the issue, owing to a lack of confidence in protection mechanisms, widespread impunity and gender-related bias and discrimination.

This is the gloomy background in a country where women won the right to vote in national elections in 1934, ten years before French women. In 1935, 18 women became Turkish MPs, or 4.6% of the parliament.

That was secular Turkey.

Today, in Turkey, the driving force is political Islam. On November 25, protestors gathered in several provinces to commemorate the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. They were met with a heavy police presence and violent crackdown. Several women were detained in the protests, including 20 journalists. “We are not allowed to leave the [police] blockade,” journalist Sultan Eylem Keleş wrote in a tweet.

This is a picture of Turkish “progress” between 1934 and 2022.

It is only the tip of the iceberg. As Erdogan’s political Islam has poisoned the uneducated masses’ freedom over the past two decades, families have turned “medieval” in their social life. The prominent Turkish columnist Yilmaz Ozdil compiled a list of crimes committed in Erdogan’s Turkey in just the past few years:

– An 11-year-old girl, who had been married by an imam, gave birth: Bolu province.
– A 12-year-old girl gave birth under a fake ID that showed her age as 18: Gaziantep province.
– A 12-year-old girl gave birth: Izmir province.
– A girl named Kader, or “fate in English.” She did not have good fate. She was forcibly married at 12, became a mother at 13 and committed suicide at 14: Siirt province.
– A girl was married, at 13, to a 40-year-old man. She ran away after severe violence from the husband. Her family rejected her. At 17 she, with her three children, had no place to live: Ordu province.
– A 15-year-old girl was forcibly married. She took refuge at a police station: Sakarya province.
– A notary public was caught endorsing the illegal marriage of a 14-year-old girl: Tekirdag province.
– A 12-year-old girl, who was forcibly married, appeared to be four months pregnant: Tokat province:
– A 16-year-old girl who had been married off by her family committed suicide by throwing herself under the train: Adana province.
– A 16-year-old married girl jumped from the seventh floor of a building: Konya province.
– There was a case of a girl of 14 being forcibly married to a man of 70, father of five and grandfather of nine.
– The Kanuni Sultan Suleyman Hospital in Istanbul reported to have received 115 pregnant girls under 15 in just five months. The hospital said it admits 500 pregnant girls in one year.

Before Erdogan came to power, civil marriage was compulsory in Turkey, and conducting a religious marriage before the civil one was punishable by a prison sentence. Under Erdogan, Turkish courts legalized religious marriages and reduced the legal age of consent for sex to 12 years of age.

Against this backdrop, even Turkey was shocked at news that a prominent Islamic sheik, the leader of a religious order fiercely devoted to Erdogan, had married off his six-year-old daughter to a 29-year-old disciple. Six! The girl had been forced into sex and became a mother at 14. She complained to the prosecutor’s office, but Erdogan’s authorities apparently did not want to bother the sheik. As she became an adult, she collected evidence of abuse, made it public, and only then the judiciary took action. Initially the court decided to try the suspects without detention, but under huge public pressure, the court detained both the father and husband. The father, in a statement, said that he was answerable only to Allah, not to a court.

Hey, West! Time to get to know your NATO partner. Erdogan’s Minister of Family and Social Services, Derya Yanık (a woman), claimed that violence against women and child abuse are not the subject of politics because they are “human nature issues and can be seen in every society.”

What is the link between these criminal acts and Erdogan’s government? First, the sheik who married off his six-year-old daughter heads a foundation linked to the influential radical Islamist Ismailaga community. Second, the Ismailaga community is one of many that fall under the umbrella of the Naqshbandi-Khalidi order, a branch of Sunni Islam of which Erdogan is said to have been a follower. Third, the funeral of the Ismailaga sect’s longtime leader earlier this year was attended by Erdogan and Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu.

There are civilized and medieval worlds in the 21st century — and there are medieval leaders dressed in suits and ties who pretend to belong to the civilized world.

Burak Bekdil, one of Turkey’s leading journalists, was recently fired from the country’s most noted newspaper after 29 years, for writing in Gatestone what is taking place in Turkey. He is a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

https://www.raptureforums.com/islam/turkish-progress-six-year-old-girl-married-by-her-sheik-father/
It will literally be hell to pay for these actions.
 

cheeky200386

Well-Known Member
I don't fault those poor girls, I would probably committ suicide to escape sexual slavery.

I just wonder about what that means for their salvation if they never heard the Gospel and were in that condition. How does God reach them in their childhood when they seem to be old enough about sin?
 

Andiamo

"Let's go!"
I don't fault those poor girls, I would probably committ suicide to escape sexual slavery.

I just wonder about what that means for their salvation if they never heard the Gospel and were in that condition. How does God reach them in their childhood when they seem to be old enough about sin?
Situations like this have disturbed me greatly and have challenged my faith over the years. These poor children who are held captive from a young age can't reject or accept what they have never had the opportunity to hear.

I believe that the Holy Spirit goes out of His way to make direct contact with their souls....penetrating their minds in thoughts, dreams, visions. Causing them to look up at the moon and stars, or taking notice of things in nature.....and causing them to wonder and ponder it all. And in my opinion, He will hold each one accountable as to the knowledge of the truth they received from Him, in whatever form it came to them, taking into consideration what they were able to understand.

I try to rest in the fact that, in His Mercy, God the Holy Spirit will reach every human being, somehow, and that His judgements are just. Despite my feelings about how unfair this world is, and feeling badly for those who will never have the gospel presented to them through a Christian's direct preaching and witness.
 

Belle of Grace

Longing for Home
I just wonder about what that means for their salvation if they never heard the Gospel and were in that condition. How does God reach them in their childhood when they seem to be old enough about sin?
God is a just God. These precious young girls most likely were lovingly received by God at their passing, and for the first time since they were born, they finally saw a real Father who loves them. I deplore what happened to them on this earth, but I totally trust our heavenly Father to provide for their salvation as not at age of accountability due to their imprisonment by earthly fathers and 'husbands'. Old enough about sin? Can't imagine that is the case. These dear sweet young girls do not even have a fully developed cerebral cortex and are incapable of making decisions about their 'marriages' and behavior due to lack of choice.
When God sent some of His people into the promised land, they were all 20 & under, considered innocent. The ones older than that were not allowed to enter. I think it's best to find scriptural precedent where possible when trying to figure out God's likely response to modern day situations.
 
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