Sexual Violence, Legal Reforms, and Forensic Reports: The Emerging Medico-Legal Discourse and Practice in Turkey

• In Event: 2433 - Law and Gender

Abstract

The Turkish Criminal Code that was enacted in 2005 states that if the forensic report indicates that the act of sexual violence has caused any “damage to physical or mental health” of the victim, the sentence is to be aggravated. Although the Code does not include forensic reports among the sine qua non types of evidence for the proof of the act, the courts have increasingly begun to ask for and use it as the primary source of evidence. Based on documentary analysis, courtroom observations and in-depth interviews with the justice system actors, I argue that the law has contradictory expectations from victims of sexual assault, who are expected to be strong and tell an articulate and consistent account of the sexual assault and to prove, at the same time, that they are victims of permanent damage. This paradoxical construction of victimhood in the medico-legal discourse, I argue, disempowers and discriminates against women seeking justice against sexual violence. By analyzing the increasing use of forensic reports in courts, I argue that despite the legal reforms that are supposedly designed to protect women from violence, the state reproduces gender inequalities through its discursive and non-discursive practices in the context of sexual violence cases. I further argue that in the contemporary period this reproduction is embedded in modern medical and legal discourses and takes place in more subtle ways that are claimed to be objective and impartial, making it much harder to address the issue of violence against women through the law.

Author

• Tugce Ellialti-Kose, University of Pennsylvania