Became a topic of discussion after Narin Güran: 'Missing child' statement from TurkStat
Following the disappearance of 8-year-old Narin Güran, Turkey began discussing the issue of missing children. The Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) issued a statement saying, "TurkStat does not publish statistics based on the number of children," and shared data on the "number of incidents involving missing (found) children who were brought to security units after being found."
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The Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) has announced that it does not publish data on missing child cases, which became a topic of discussion following the Narin Güran murder investigation, but that it does publish data on the number of incidents involving missing (found) children who were brought to security units after being found.
'NUMBER OF INCIDENTS INVOLVING CHILDREN IS PUBLISHED'
The statement included the following remarks:
Recently, there has been a need to make a statement regarding the "Statistics on Children Coming or Brought to Security Units" published by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat), following reports in the public domain that do not reflect the facts.
The purpose of the study is to determine the causes and dimensions of child victimization and delinquency in our country, and to create an infrastructure for deciding on policies and strategies that will form the basis for preventive, protective, and rehabilitative measures in line with the information obtained. The Statistics on Children Coming or Brought to Security Units (GBGGÇİ) studies began in 1997, covering 27 provinces. Within the scope of the Official Statistics Program (2007-2011), the geographical scope of the study was expanded to 81 provinces in 2007, and the content of the questionnaire was also improved. The detailed statistics produced consist of data obtained from the General Directorate of Security and the General Command of the Gendarmerie. Until 2017, data obtained from questionnaires filled out at security units were used in the production of official statistics. With the administrative record data reaching sufficient maturity, the use of administrative records was switched to directly instead of questionnaires as the data source. Due to this change, the data has been revised based on administrative records since 2015. The indicators included in the study represent the number of incidents involving each child, whether a Turkish citizen or not, who has come or been brought to security units one or more times, and whose files have been transferred to the Offices of the Chief Public Prosecutor or not. In the data used, there is a separate record for each incident that occurs for a person. In other words, statistics based on the number of children are not published by TurkStat.
DATA PUBLISHED
The claim appearing in some press and media outlets and social media accounts that missing child statistics are no longer published by TurkStat is not true. TurkStat continues to regularly publish data on the number of incidents involving missing (found) children according to the data of the General Directorate of Security and the General Command of the Gendarmerie.
In this context, 'missing (found)' children announced by TurkStat cover children for whom an official missing person report has been filed and who have been found by security units or citizens and brought to security units. The "number of incidents involving missing (found) children who were brought to security units after being found across Turkey" within the scope of GBGGÇİ is included in the table below.