One third of Turkish women feel unsafe, uneasy on street

ISTANBUL - Anatolia News Agency

A majority of Turkish women feel safe at home, but 34 percent say they feel unsafe on the streets. The numbers fall when it comes to Turkish men, with only 12 percent feeling unsafe outside of their homes. DAILY NEWS photo, Hasan ALTINIŞIK

Turkish women worry for their safety more than Turkish men, according to figures released by the state-run Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK).

The report aimed to gauge levels of Turkish people’s feelings of security and safety, in their homes and on the streets. The rate of women who felt unsafe in their own homes was 10 percent, with only a small minority of 3.8 percent of men fearing for their safety at home.

About 80 percent of Turkish people in general feel safe at home, the report said, with 17 percent of people feeling “very safe,” 12 percent “fairly safe” and around seven percent feeling “unsafe” or “highly unsafe” at home.

A majority of women, 75.6 percent, felt “highly safe” in their homes, with over 85 percent of men feeling equal levels of safety at home.

Surroundings

The numbers showed that 58.8 percent of Turkish people felt safe in their wider surroundings, while 23.4 percent did not. TUİK officials reported that 17.8 of people said they felt a medium level of safety in their surroundings.

Outside the home, 34 percent of women did not feel safe, according to the report, whereas only a minority of 12 percent of men felt unsafe. While a strong majority, 70 percent, of men felt safe in their surroundings, this number was only 47 percent for women.

The number of women applying to women’s shelters to escape domestic violence has increased considerably in 2012, as Social Affairs Minister Fatma Şahin has previously told members of the press.

Some 4,489 women suffering from domestic violence applied to the women’s shelter in the first nine months of 2012 alone, along with 1,930 children, according to the ministry’s numbers.

Previous TUİK data showed that the best Turkish city for women to live in was Istanbul, with a present female population of 7 million. Istanbul has a lower rate of early marriage, and the rate of women aged over 14 who have graduated from high school is relatively high. Out of 5.2 million women, a total of 1.1 million, or 21 percent, have graduated from high school or university.

However, with only 160 female members out of a total of 13,154 municipality members, Istanbul remains second worst in this area to Diyarbakır.