BRITISH Alevi Women’s Union, gave a response to the debate in Turkey, “9-year-old girls can get married and become a mother” from London. About 30 men and women came together in the central settlement of the British Alevi Federation against paedophilia and child abuse. “Take your hands off our children”, “No to sexual exploitation”, “No to child marriage”, the group listened to Özlem Şahin’s statement. In the explanation, the following parts came forward:
“We are living together with the victims of the Presidency of Religious Affairs as a country and society. Let’s not forget that the biggest victims are women and children. The increasing sectarian religious reaction in the AKP era first began to destroy the education system, then the everyday life of the society through the Religious and communities. The AKP government is setting up a sectarian regime. The Diyanet is a position that has played an important role in the institutionalisation of this regime. Women and children, in particular, have been the target of these reactionary and sectarian policies.
We Alevi women, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, based on the root of the Muaviye and we know from the evil. We know and recognise the Umayyad mentality that has turned into sectarian and state religion from the fetishes of the sexist, the imputer, the denier, the assimilator and the people who oppressed the people. If we are Alevites, we are exposed to this attack in a layered manner.
Diyanet doesn’t not like Religious Alevi and secularism. Because, apart from the Alevis and Alevism men and women who favor laicism, it is important to live on the basis of equality and to participate in women’s public space. They will send daughters to school for education. They do not have the beliefs that they despise the woman, keeping them abandoned at home, approve the marriage at childhood, and exclude the woman from their rights. Thus, this universal doctrine of Alevism has been decisive in the growth of women and girls, and of having an identity… It will be seen that this mind-set continues to look at the secondary education curricula and the textbooks of the Imam Hatip schools. We also know that this mind-set continues as witnesses to those who abuse children in their homeland of sects and communities such as the ENSAR Foundation. While 387 children were exposed to sexual exploitation in 2017, the number of cases of child abuse increased by 700 percent in the last 10 years. Everyone is doing their own good … As Alevi women we say; our name, our identity, our body, our soul, our rights, and our children we won’t leave them at the mercy of your dark reactionary old school thoughts! ”
After Sahin’s declaration, Nevin Kamilağaoğlu, the President of the European Alevi Women’s Union stated, the AKP government in Turkey has radicalised Islam in Turkey and have taken decisions that makes sexual exploitation of women and children much easier.
