Violation of bodily integrity most common crime in 63 Turkish provinces: Ministry

A breakdown of crimes according to their type and where they were committed was compiled by the General Directorate of Criminal Records and Statistics of the Justice Ministry under the title “Turkey’s Crime Atlas” in the Criminal Statistics booklet for 2015.

The atlas provided statistics on charges brought against different crimes across Turkey’s provinces in 2015. 

According to the data, the most common crime in 63 provinces was “crimes against the right to bodily integrity” – a right which is frequently violated through gender-based violence as well. Such crimes include, among others, sexual assault, unwanted pregnancy and domestic abuse. 

These types of crime were most frequently reported in the Aegean and Mediterranean regions of Turkey, in addition to Central Anatolia, the Black Sea region and eastern Anatolia. 

Crimes against property were another common crime as the greatest number of cases dealt with such violations in 17 provinces, including Istanbul and the country’s capital. This type of crime was most common in the Marmara region and in the country’s southeast. 

In terms of crimes within the scope of special laws, the most commonly reported crime was opposition to law enforcement and bankruptcy across 57 provinces. In 14 provinces, including Ankara, the largest number of people were sued over violating the anti-smuggling law. 

The study supported a heightened concern in Turkey over increased reports of sexual assaults targeting women and children, especially after two watershed incidents that sent shockwaves across the country, the murder of university student Özgecan Aslan and the sexual abuse of 10 male children by their teacher. 

Aslan, a 20-year-old female student, was brutally killed by a driver of a minibus in which she was traveling from the Tarsus district to Mersin city center, after a failed attempt to rape the young woman. Her burned body found in a riverbed in Tarsus two days after her parents filed a missing person report with the police in February 2015. 

The second case took place in the Central Anatolian province of Karaman, where a 54-year-old teacher sexually abused 10 male school children at apartments rented by the Karaman branch of the Ensar Foundation and the Karaman Religious Vocational High School (İmam Hatip) Alumni Association (KAİMDER).

A local court sentenced the man to 508 years and three months in prison in April 2016.