Ayten Gülsever calls for stronger child protection policies

Ayten Gülsever, head of the Republican People's Party (CHP) Women's Branch, has called for robust, preventive, and public child protection policies following the release of 2025 data from the Turkish Statistical Institute.

According to the data, 609,959 incidents involving children were recorded by security units in 2025, with children identified as victims in 267,794 of those cases. Among the 224,579 incidents involving victimization, 59.2% were related to injury, 10.3% to sexual crimes, 8.5% to crimes against the family structure, and 5% to threats.

Gülsever emphasized that increasing penalties alone is insufficient to protect children from violence, abuse, poverty, and organized crime. She argued that the statistics reflect inadequacies in the social state, education systems, and early intervention mechanisms. She stressed that the responsibility for child safety must lie with public institutions and the social state rather than being left solely to families and mothers.