Turkey has embarked on a campaign to retrieve children of Turkish immigrant families living in Europe who are fostered by foreigners, and instead place them in homes where their cultural identity can be preserved.
The step comes after a court in the Netherlands refused last week to return nine-year-old Yunus -who had been taken into care by a Dutch lesbian couple to his biological Turkish family, reportedly citing the mother’s inability to speak Dutch.
Turkey fears that children placed in Christian homes will forget their Muslim roots, and also disapproves of placements with gay couples.
A statement from Turkey’s expatriates authority YTB said that Yunus’s foster parents frequently took him to church, and that ‘out of his confusion about the family institution’, he calls both foster parents ‘mother’.
Following the verdict, Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag told reporters: ‘Turkish families just do not want to give their kids to gay or lesbian couples.
‘It is important for kids to be raised in an environment similar to (their) home culture.’
Turkey had since stepped up efforts to guide the family through legal procedures to get Yunus back. Failing that, Bozdag said, authorities would push to get the boy placed with parents the family would approve of.
Unlike some European countries, same-sex marriages are not recognised in Muslim-majority Turkey. Former Families Minister Aliye Kavaf found herself at the centre of a public row in 2010 after she described homosexuality as a ‘disease that needs tobe treated’.
The step comes after a court in the Netherlands refused last week to return nine-year-old Yunus -who had been taken into care by a Dutch lesbian couple to his biological Turkish family, reportedly citing the mother’s inability to speak Dutch.
Turkey fears that children placed in Christian homes will forget their Muslim roots, and also disapproves of placements with gay couples.
A statement from Turkey’s expatriates authority YTB said that Yunus’s foster parents frequently took him to church, and that ‘out of his confusion about the family institution’, he calls both foster parents ‘mother’.
Following the verdict, Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag told reporters: ‘Turkish families just do not want to give their kids to gay or lesbian couples.
‘It is important for kids to be raised in an environment similar to (their) home culture.’
Turkey had since stepped up efforts to guide the family through legal procedures to get Yunus back. Failing that, Bozdag said, authorities would push to get the boy placed with parents the family would approve of.
Unlike some European countries, same-sex marriages are not recognised in Muslim-majority Turkey. Former Families Minister Aliye Kavaf found herself at the centre of a public row in 2010 after she described homosexuality as a ‘disease that needs tobe treated’.