Turkish girls to face expulsion if they fail virginity test
Turkey’s health minister has ordered that virginity tests can be performed on high school girls who are ‘‘known to be having sex or engaging in prostitution.’’
The order by Health Minister Osman Durmus came despite a ban on the practice ordered two years ago after five teenage orphans took rat poison and jumped into a water tank rather than submit to the humiliating tests.
The girls, who had returned to their orphanage late at night, were forced to undergo the tests from their hospital beds.
Durmus’ order is an attempt to circumvent the ban.
It authorises virginity test on girls at medical high schools, which are high schools where girls study to be nurses or medical technicians.
The tests can be carried out on students ‘‘known to be having sex or engaging in prostitution,’’ the regulation states, but only if the girl’s parents consent to the test and a judge approves the examination.
Bulent Ulutas, general manager of the ministry’s Health Education Department, defended the decision.
‘‘The whole point is to protect our children,’’ he said. ‘‘One person can be sacrificed to save 10 people.’’
The Health Ministry is controlled by the Nationalist Action Party, a far-right member of the coalition Government.
If the test reveals that a student is not a virgin, she will be dismissed from school and forbidden from studying at any state institution, the regulation states.
Human rights and women’s rights groups expressed outrage at the decision.
‘‘This is a perfect excuse for sexual abuse in schools and the shaming of students they don’t like,’’ said Halime Guner, a member of the women’s rights group Ucan Supurge.
Virginity is highly valued throughout the Muslim world, but the tests appear to be mostly restricted to Turkey.
The tests were applied to girls in state orphanages and prisons, and sometimes to foreign women staying in hotel rooms with male companions before they were banned in 1999 amid outrage from human rights and women’s groups.
