TURKEY: Some women in Turkey look to EU membership as the fastest way to bring modernity to their lives. Ayla Jean Yackley reports from Sanliurfa
The girls labouring in the cotton fields on the outskirts of the south-east Turkish city of Sanliurfa cannot read a newspaper, but they are pinning their hopes of a better life on Turkey's EU membership drive.
Her face weathered by a scorching sun, her hands calloused, 16-year-old Zahide says she is old before her time. She never went to school and had given up dreams of learning a trade.
"The European Union would not permit us to work like this. We would study," she says, toiling from sunrise to sunset during the two-month harvest with four of her sisters.
EU leaders will decide in December whether to open accession talks with this populous Muslim nation, and diplomats say women's rights will be one issue the European Commission pays attention to in an October 6th report on Turkey's entry bid.
"For the EU, gender inequality in Turkey is a concern," one EU diplomat said.
"While it's very difficult to change, since it is a question of mentality and tradition . . . the government has not taken full responsibility for promoting change."
Turkish women do enjoy greater freedoms than those in many other Muslim nations. For decades they have had the right to vote, access to education and the right to divorce. Turks even elected a female prime minister in 1993.
Some are corporate executives, university rectors and heads of bar associations, and many in wealthier western Turkey emulate their European counterparts in dress and choice of profession.
Yet the constitution does not enshrine gender equality, and poverty and entrenched values mean equal treatment is elusive.
Religious tradition, especially in conservative cities like Sanliurfa, often means girls as young as 12 are married off.
Amnesty International says that up to half of women face domestic abuse in a "culture of violence".
Yesterday a leading Turkish human rights group said it had received nearly 700 complaints alleging torture in the first six months of 2004 alone and that this figure showed the practice remained "systematic" in Turkey.
The Human Rights Association said it would show its data to a team sent by the European Commission to investigate accusations of continued torture in the EU candidate country.
"Torture is systematic in Turkey. The proof of this is that we received 692 applications in the first half of 2004," the association said in an open letter to the Prime Minister, Mr Tayyip Erdogan.
"This figure does not include victims of torture who prefer to stay silent, who try to overcome the trauma . . . or fear being exposed to heavier torture if detained again."
The UN children's agency, Unicef, says 600,000 fewer girls than boys attend school, and a third of women are illiterate.
The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), a conservative movement with Islamist roots, has enacted political and human rights reforms aimed at winning a date for EU talks.
The last major piece of the reform jigsaw is an overhaul of the penal code designed to bring it into line with EU norms.
The reforms, which include a number of measures aimed specifically at improving women's rights, are being debated in parliament this week and are likely to be approved at the weekend.
They include stiffer penalties for rape, including rape within marriage, and for so-called honour killings, the murder of women by male relatives to protect the family name.