ABSTRACT
Introduction The Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat (2010) reported that the lifetime prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) among the ever-partnered or ever-married women in China and Hong Kong SAR and Canada is 6 percent and 7 percent respectively. This percentage is above 10 percent in Italy, above 20 percent in Mexico, around 40 percent in Turkey, and over 48 percent in Zambia (The Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, 2010). These numbers clearly indicate that domestic violence is one of the most important social problems all over the world. Turkey is among the countries where domestic violence remains high. According to Bianet (2016), which gathers data from media sources such as newspapers, websites, and news reports, 217 women were murdered in 2010, 257 women in 2011, 165 in 2012, 214 women in 2013, 281 in 2014, and 278 in 2015. Husbands, partners, ex-husbands, and ex-partners mostly account for approximately 50 percent of the murders. The former minister of justice, during a speech to respond to a parliamentary question, provided a shocking statistic for violence against women that showed a 1400 percent increase in women murdered in the five years between 2002 and 2007 (Cetin, 2015). Other than murders, physical and sexual abuse which result in injuries also remain as a significant social problem in Turkey over those years. Ilkkaracan (1998) found that nearly 58 percent of women who live in the eastern part of Turkey reported that they suffered from physical violence and approximately 52 percent of them reported that they suffered sexual violence from their husbands. Altinay and Arat (2007), in their national survey, found that 34 percent of women had been subjected to physical violence at least once. Yüksel-Kaptanoğlu and Çavlin (2015) found that the proportion of women who have reported lifetime physical violence is 36 percent in 2014. The percentage of sexual violence is 12 percent and 38 percent of women have experienced at least one of these two forms of violence (Yüksel-Kaptanoğlu & Çavlin, 2015). This result indicated that physical violence is accompanied by sexual violence in most cases (YükselKaptanoğlu & Çavlin, 2015). Korkut-Owen and Owen (2008) state that domestic violence against women ranges between 25 percent and 30 percent in Turkey.
