[AlAhram] A bill in ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
that would overturn men's convictions for child sex assault if they married their victim provoked fury on Friday, with critics accusing the government of encouraging rape of minors with the proposals.
The opposition, celebrities, and even an association whose deputy chairman is the daughter of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him...
expressed alarm over the move.
But the government insisted the legislation was aimed at dealing with the widespread custom of child marriages and the criticism was a crude distortion of its aim.
The measures were approved in an initial parliamentary reading on Thursday and will be voted on again in a second debate in the coming days.
If passed, the law would allow the release from prison of men guilty of assaulting a minor if the act was committed without "force, threat, or any other restriction on consent" and if the aggressor "marries the victim".
The legal age of consent in Turkey is 18 but child marriage is widespread, especially in the southeast.
Dozens protested the bill in central Istanbul, tearing up copies of the proposed legislation and brandishing slogans like "rape is a crime against humanity".
The bill was brought to parliament by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
"The AKP is pushing through a text which pardons those who marry the child that they raped," said an MP for the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) Ozgur Ozel.
On Twitter, the hashtag #TecavuzMesrulastirilamaz (Rape Cannot be Legitimised) became a top-trending topic as users took to social media to express their anger.
A petition on change.org urging the authorities to block the legislation has received over 600,000 signatures.
The pro-government Women's and Democracy Association (KADEM), whose deputy chairman is Erdogan's younger daughter Sumeyye Erdogan Bayraktar, said one of the biggest problems of the bill would be proving on a legal basis what constituted force or consent.
"How can the 'own will' of such a young girl be identified?" it asked. "We would like to draw attention to issues that might arise in case of it coming into force."
Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said the measure would only be applied once on past convictions, applying to offences committed before November 11, 2016.
"There are people who get married before reaching the legal age. They just don't know the law," he told news hounds in Ankara, adding that the measure aims to "get rid of this injustice".
He said claims that the law would de-facto legalise rape were "completely false", noting that the government had raised penalties for the crime, accusing the CHP of exploiting the issue for political gain.
Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said marriages involving minors were "unfortunately a reality" in Turkey but the men involved "were not rapists or sexual aggressors."
He said the measure would affect some 3,000 families.
The latest controversy comes after Turkey's constitutional court in July annulled a criminal code provision punishing as "sexual abuse" all sexual acts involving children under the age of 15. Defenders of that law argued it made a distinction between cases of sexual acts involving a young teenager as opposed to a much younger child.
Campaigners accuse the government of not doing enough to stamp out the practice and of being more interested in pushing up the birth rate.
Gauri van Gulik,
"It is impossible... to guarantee that there was in fact full and informed consent of the girl, not just of her family," she said.
Turkey seeks detention of 103 university academics in Gulen-related probe
[Ynet] Turkish prosecutors ordered the detention of 103 academics at an Istanbul university on Friday in an investigation targeting followers of U.S.-based holy man Fethullah Gulen
... a Turkish preacher living in Pennsylvania whom the current govt of Turkey considers responsible for all the ills afflicting Turkey and possibly the entire world...
, NTV said.
It said the investigation was focused on the city's Yildiz Technical University. The Hurriyet newspaper website said 70 academics had been already been detained in simultaneous raids across the city by organised crime police teams.