Turkey to encourage diaspora to foster parents

With a new awareness campaign, the Family and Social Policies Ministry is taking steps to motivate Turks living abroad to adopt children from broken Turkish families in the countries where they live.

Family and Social Policies Minister, Ayşenur İslam, says that the Gönül Elçileri (Voluntary Ambassadors) Project that her ministry coordinates in Turkey will expand abroad, and that Turks living abroad will be encouraged to foster children from dysfunctional Turkish families in the countries where they live.

The project, spearheaded by First Lady Emine Erdoğan, aims to spread volunteering to charities and foster parenting. The ministry will open offices abroad to coordinate the project's international division.

İslam said that the ministry will coordinate with the Foreign Ministry for the appointment of Family and Social Policies attaches or advisors at Turkish missions abroad, and the first such office will be opened in Germany where approximately 2.7 million Turkish nationals live.

"We aim to help Turkish citizens abroad to better benefit from social and economic services offered by their host country, and to offer them such services if they are unavailable. Our offices will work within the framework of the laws of the host countries and cooperate with non-governmental organizations in those countries," İslam said.

She stated that children of many Turkish families in other countries were in the custody of those countries' social services and handed to volunteer foster parents. "Foster parents are generally non-Turkish families, and we hear complaints that they do not bring up the children in compliance with Turkish culture," İslam said. The minister stated that they planned to negotiate with other countries for permission to allow non-governmental organizations to shelter and care for those children. "But it is more important that we encourage Turkish families to adopt the children (from broken homes). The children can be adopted by a Turkish or Muslim family. This requires foster parents to apply to social services in their host country. We plan to make this application widespread," she said.

The ministry also plans to hold talks with the relevant authorities in countries where Turks live for transfering Turkish children in need of foster care to Turkey.

Turkey has stepped up efforts on the issue following several cases in which Turkish families in European countries complained that social services often ignore children's cultural and religious identity. The government mobilized diplomatic efforts in 2013 after the story of nine-year-old Yunus made headlines. He was removed from his biological parents after he was injured when his Turkish mother accidentally dropped him on the floor when he was six months old. Dutch social services claimed that the mother did not properly care for the child. Subsequently, the Turkish boy was adopted by a lesbian couple in the Netherlands. Yunus' family claimed that the boy was confused about "family values because of (his) same-sex parents and was frequently taken to church."

No concrete figures are available on the number of children separated from their biological parents, but non-governmental organizations in Germany claim at least 3,000 children were placed in the care of social services in that country, and most of them have been handed to German foster families in recent years.