Early marriage, lifelong abuse

It was the 1980s when a strange girl from the Black Sea appeared in my grandmother's home in Ankara. S., a 15-year-old village girl with a lopsided face, looked as if she could run away any moment; she never talked. She was kidnapped and raped by a village boy, we, the kids, were told... The boy was in love with S.' sister and wanted to kidnap her, but in the dark, he mistook S. for her older sister. Nevertheless, he raped her at night and in the morning, he said he would marry her.

But S.' mother, a courageous and creative woman, stood against it. She did not want to see her daughter in the grave as a victim of an honor killing nor as a rapist's wife. She also knew that her daughter, no longer a virgin, would be harassed endlessly if she stayed in the village.

So she begged my grandmother, the family matriarch, to take S., who later took sewing lessons. Today, some three decades later, S. is an accomplished tailor and is very happy, married to the man of her choice. All it took was one mother who refused to bow down to tradition and disagree with the village's common thought that "better married than dead… Or, God forbid, a prostitute."

As we commemorate the International Day for Elimination of Violence against Women on Nov. 25, it may be time to recognize forced marriages, particularly the forced marriage of underage girls, as one of the most deplorable forms of violence - and an act that forces girls into a life time of violence and abuse.

In the course of the  last week, Turks from many different political views took to the streets in protest at a bill that aimed to pardon men convicted of statutory rape (sex with an underage girl) if they marry the girl.

When the bill was withdrawn in the face of protests, Justice...