Acts of violence have seen a dramatic increase in every segment of Turkish society over the years, according to a report drafted by an opposition lawmaker who cited official data.

Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) lawmaker Zeynel Emre released the details of his report in a video on his personal YouTube channel on Tuesday in which he accused the policies of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has been ruling Turkey as a single-party government since 2002, of being responsible for the surge of violence in the country.

According to report, titled, “AKP’s quarter-century-long dark legacy: burnout and social violence,” acts of violence involving children, women, animals, healthcare personnel and many others have become a daily occurrence in the country.

Violence involving children

Data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) showed that a total of 537,000 acts of violence involving children were reported to the police in 2023. In half of these cases, children were the victims of violence, with 61 percent of them suffering injures, 12 percent subjected to sexual abuse and others experiencing domestic violence, according to the report.

The other half of the cases involved children who were reported to be the perpetrators of violence, 40 percent of whom were accused of causing injury and 20 percent of theft, while others were accused of using illegal drugs.

Emre said these figures represent only the “tip of the iceberg” as the real scale of the acts of violence could be bigger, but Turkish families have a habit of covering up such acts.

He gave as an example the case of 8-year-old Narin Güran, whose disappearance and the discovery of her body in a sack in a river in southeastern Turkey after a days-long search on September 9 continues to make headlines. Many of Güran’s family members have been detained in connection to her murder, while 10 including her mother and a brother have been arrested. The mystery of the girl’s murder, which presumably involved her immediate family, has not yet been resolved.

Gun violence

According to official data, there were at least 3,373 acts of gun violence in Turkey in 2023, in 2,318 of which at least one person was killed. There were also 3,820 incidents resulting in the injury of people in 2023, with the Marmara region taking the lead as the place with the most frequent acts of violence.

Citing data from the Umut (Hope) Foundation, a civil society organization dedicated to reducing gun ownership in Turkey, Emre said there have been 34,197 acts of violence in Turkey since 2014 that led to the death of 21,434 people and the injury of 31,207 others.

“It’s like we’re in a big war — our people are killed, they get injured,” said Eren.

Murders of women

The report also included information about the number of women who fell victim to domestic violence in Turkey in 2023.

Data from the Federation of Women’s Associations of Turkey put the number of women who were killed by men in 2023 at 438, while it was 315 according to the We Will Stop Femicide Platform. Emre said 28 of the women were murdered despite a protective order issued by a court.

He said the AKP government failed to curb domestic violence in the country despite promising that withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention would not lead to a rise in acts of violence against women.

Opposition from the international community and women’s rights groups notwithstanding, Turkey officially withdrew from the Istanbul Convention in July 2021, which requires governments to adopt legislation prosecuting perpetrators of domestic violence and similar abuse as well as marital rape and female genital mutilation.

President and leader of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Recep Tayyip Erdoğan claimed at the time that the treaty had been “hijacked by a group of people attempting to normalize homosexuality” which he said was “incompatible” with Turkey’s “social and family values.”

75 percent increase in sexual offenses

Turkey has also seen an increase in the number of sexual offenses over the past six years, recording a 75 percent rise, according to the report, which relied on data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

While the number of sexual offenses was 5,528 in 2016, this figure rose to 9,675 in 2022.

Emre said AKP government officials do nothing except post tweets in the wake of such incidents in the country although they have been in power for of a quarter of a century.

Violence against healthcare personnel

Turkey’s healthcare personnel have gotten their share of the increasing violence in the country, facing attacks from patients or their relatives who hold them responsible for delays in their treatment or their poor health.

The number of acts of violence against medical workers in Turkey, which was 249 in 2022, rose to 457 in 2023, an 83 percent increase, according to the report.

Acts of violence in the healthcare sector, accompanied by other problems related to their working conditions, have led thousands of doctors to move overseas.

Turkey has the fewest number of doctors in Europe when the populations of the countries are taken into consideration, according to 2021 data from Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.