Turkey’s chief public prosecutors opened a total of 193,212 sexual offense investigations in 2023, the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported, citing the Judicial Statistics 2023 report from the Ministry of Justice.
Of these cases 66,138 involved child sexual abuse. The breakdown of other types of sexual offenses included 63,003 cases of sexual harassment, 36,397 cases of sexual assault and 27,674 cases of sexual relations with minors.
A total of 43,458 individuals were tried in criminal courts for allegedly committing sexual offenses in 2023. Out of the 15,244 who were convicted, 7,014 received suspended sentences.
The latest figures show a significant increase, with the number of cases under investigation in 2023 rising by 62.4 percent compared to 2022, which had 118,959 cases.
Femicides and violence against women are serious problems in Turkey, where women are killed, raped or beaten every day. Critics say the main reason behind the situation is the policies of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, which protects violent and abusive men by affording them impunity.
In an overnight decree in 2021 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan withdrew Turkey from the Istanbul Convention, which requires member states to adopt domestic legislation and strictly punish domestic abuse and gender-based violence.
Turkey was ranked 127th out of 146 countries with respect to inequalities between men and women in the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Gender Gap Report 2024.