Scathing Report: Turkish Kids 'Put in State Care Illegally'

Children studying at an Islamic school in the German city of Mannheim

Turkish lawmakers are making their displeasure known in unusually strong terms: "Thousands of Turkish children" living in several European countries have been illegally removed from their families, according to a report by the Turkish Parliament's Human Rights Inquiry Committee (IHIK). Around 5,000 children and young people throughout Europe have supposedly been affected.

The report attacks Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands in particular, according to an article in the English-language Turkish newspaper Today's Zaman. The committee members also write that judges in family courts are regularly attaching greater significance to the allegations of youth services than to what the parents have to say. It is becoming apparent, they state, that judges usually decide against the parents. The principle that every action taken must be for the sake of the children is being "interpreted arbitrarily."

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The chairman of the commission, Ayhan Sefer Üstün of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK), voiced criticism in the spring over three similar cases in Belgium. The Belgian authorities had housed children from families of Turkish origin with homosexual couples. For Üstün, this was a clear violation of the children's human rights, because the lifestyle and beliefs of homosexual couples were not compatible with those of Turkish families. The children, he said, were being "forced" into an alternative lifestyle.  (more...)

Scathing Report: Turkish Kids 'Put in State Care Illegally'