Faysal Sarıyıldız, Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) Şırnak deputy who is currently in prison in Diyarbakır D Type Closed Prison, asked for a parliamentary inquiry on child brides and forced and early marriages.
In the motion which Sarıyıldız presented through BDP Group deputy chair Pervin Buldan, the BDP deputy remarked that one out of three women is forced to marry at an early age. Sarıyıldız stated that early and forced marriages amount to sexual abuse against children and said that the “child bride” issue violated the Convention on the Rights of the Children. “Early marriages are a result of not only social, economic and psychological factors but also of neglecting political authorities that fail to produce legislazion and a proper policy to overcome this problem. The male-dominant social structure is one of the major causes of early and forced marriages which have become usual and legitimate because of this structure. Early marriage, which is an attack on children's psychological and physical world, makes a comeback as a problem in the society. The girls who are subject to early marriage are deprived of their basic rights to education and health as well as many other vital rights”, said Sarıyıldız. The BDP deputy called attention to recent TUIK figures, according to which there are over 181 thousand child brides in Turkey. Sarıyıldız defended that those who force children to marry early should be subject to legal sanctions.
Referring to a recent survey carried out by the Center for Research on Women's Problem of Diyarbakır Municipality ( DİKASUM), Sarıyıldız added that; “More than half of the women who participated in the survey married before the age of 15. According to figures by DİKASUM, one third of the women who are hosted in women’s shelter were forced to marry and 20 percent of them first bore a child before 18. In consideration of the marriage forms of the women who joined the survey, it is seen that 72 percent of them were forced to marry without their consent, while 30 percent of child brides  married men they have not seen before. According to the survey, nearly one out of every three women considered or attempted to commit a suicide”.