Amendments in Anti-Terror Act not Sufficient to Protect Children

The Justice for Children Group claims that the amendments for children in the Anti-Terror Law (TMY) announced by government spokesman Cemil Çiçek are not sufficient.

The group said that the mentioned amendments are positive, however they emphasized that children are exposed to long sentences and these penalties will not been cut shorter. The group analyzed the situation as follows:  

Impeding of increased penalties for children: If a child receives a 90 months sentence for example, this penalty can only be reduced by 20 months upon the amendments. These children are sentenced to 71 months and 10 days imprisonment, apart from a few cases receiving shorter sentences. There are children being handed sentences of 190 months. This amendment providing a reduction of only 20 months does not solve the problem.

Children aged between 16-18 years to be tried at juvenile courts: It is important not to prosecute children of any age at the High Criminal Court, regardless of age differences. The amendments are made because children receive high penalties, but it is impossible to decree different sentences from now if they are decided by a high criminal judge.

Delay in punishment, redemption, postponement of the verdict and optional sanctions: It is important that the road was opened to optional sanctions for children aged 16-18. However, in order to apply those sanctions, considering a postponement for instance the given penalty must be 3 years at the most. The law articles allowing children's imprisonment for more than 3 years have to be amended. Otherwise, this amendment will not bring any benefit to most of the children.

8 articles to be amended

According the Justice for Children Group, for the protection of children 6 articles of the TMY and one article each of the Turkish Criminal Code (TCK) and of the Meetings and Demonstrations Act have to be amended. Çiçekçi has mentioned only three of these 8 amendments. The group draws attention to the following articles:

Article 2 on handing sentences to children because of being related to or a member of an organization.

Article 5 on increasing penalties within the scope of TMY

Article 7/2-a giving way to punish children because of propaganda for an organization by partially or entirely covering their face.

Article 9 reasoning why children aged between 16-18 years are prosecuted at the high criminal court instead of the children's high criminal court.

Article 13 banning a postponement of the verdict, redemption and optional sanctions for children aged 16-18.

Article 17 regarding the execution of punishment and the release under certain conditions.

TCK article 220/6 giving way to punishing children for being related to or a member of an organization.

Meeting and Demonstration Act article 33-c: giving way to punish children for equaling the throwing of stones to security forces with armed resistance.

"Review the amendments"

The Justice for Children Group emphasized that the announced amendments do not meet the requirements for a real solution of the problem that children become victims of the TMY. The group asked the Council of Ministers to review the amendments in the light of the given information. (TK/VK)