VAN (DIHA) – Women and girls in Turkey suffer from a myriad of injustices. But in the Southeast and East, the cruelties faced by girls have become more painful and more inescapable with the rise of ‘child brides for sale’. Girls are the victims of poverty as their fathers sell them to old, widowed or handicapped men; they are pedophiles who sustain modern slavery and human trafficking.

Besides increasing rates of suicide, executions and berdel (exchanging girls against their will), girls must now deal with this problem. A girl, sold for only enough money to buy a tractor, will face great horrors if she manages to run away.
Girls, aged between 13 and 17, are being sold in the region mostly in Van, Agri, Mus, Ercis, Dogubayazit, Ozalp, Caldiran, Muradiye, Diyadin and Patnos. They are considered as one of many possible sources of income by their fathers, like property or chattel. Victimized girls are being raised as “financial options” by their families.

‘The agents’, or slave traders, sell the young girls to ‘buyers’ who are mostly old, handicapped or widower. Fathers as the ’owners’ of the girls negotiate with the agents. No one asks about the ‘sold’ girls’ after the ‘deal’ is made.
Selling his own daughter, the retired ’agent’ S.I. in Ercis district of Van, explained to a DIHA reporter how this ‘industry’ works: “I started in this business 15 years ago after selling my daughter to a 50-year-old man for 3000 Turkish Lira (approximately US$1,500) because of poverty. This was my destiny and I connected with other agents and I worked until 2004.
Kurdish girls were preferred because people from the East believe that Kurdish girls are submissive and loyal. The sellers are mostly fathers but sometimes they are brothers. After negotiation between buyers and sellers, I receive my commission and then the marriage begins. I saw a lot of tragedy from these kinds of marriages. For example girls usually cannot get along with their husbands and want to come back to their family’s house.

But this is not a solution for them since the family has programmed them to accept their fate as married. Divorce is frowned upon as a way to solve domestic problems. Most of those girls who leave their husbands are immediately sold to another man. “

One of the victimized girls shared her story: “I was thirteen years old when my father sold me to a 45 year old man. My family forced me to marry because of money. I had to accept it since my family was really poor. I endured his torture for six years and then came back to my home. But my father made me marry a widower, who I’m still living with.”

F.A. was sold to a man who is mentally handicapped when she was 19 years old. He beat her every day. She left him to run away back home. Her father made her marry another man as the second wife in the house.

There are thousands of these stories in the region and all the victims are girls. This extremely sad story will most probably continue until poverty ends and tradition and customs changes in the region.

(gü)