Unemployment, low wages, difficult living conditions, inflation and other factors are increasingly pushing women in Turkey to become sex workers. Women from different walks of life, including textile workers, university students and housewives, say they are working in the sex industry to provide a basic living for themselves or take care of their children.
Syrian refugees residing in Turkey, who are socially and economically marginalised, are also signing up to become sex workers in considerable numbers. With their husbands killed in the civil war or simply gone missing, these women, many of them who have never worked before, are finding themselves having to provide for themselves and their children in a foreign country.
The rate of women above the age of 15 in labour force is Some sex workers find their customers through social media, while others find clients from the homes where they also work as cleaners, and others in local parks. A woman, who identifies herself as S.
She tried looking for jobs, but to no avail, as she had no prior employment experience. Thirty-year-old Esra who lives in the Bey neighbourhood of Adana has been a sex worker for two years. After working in the textile industry for long years, her ailing health prevented her from keeping up with the relentless work pace and she was fired.
Lamenting that everything from rent, bills, clothing and food is very expensive, Esra says the cost of living is continually on the rise. One has a husband who knows about what she does and another does it to take care of her two small children, she says. Another woman, Serap, makes full use of social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram to find customers. The year-old is also a former textile worker who threw in the towel on that industry in order to become an escort.
