ISIL's focus on women criticised in Turkey and the Balkans

ISIL's focus on women criticised in Turkey and the Balkans

Citizens and experts urge states to react decisively against ISIL and its propaganda.

Atrocities being committed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) include the recruitment of women to serve as sex slaves for fighters.

The terrorist organisation, which is recruiting Muslim women in Turkey and Europe, has established centres to organise the sending of women to Iraq and Syria. A so-called "marriage bureau" is in Aleppo, urging "single women and widows to provide their names and addresses" and join ISIL.

Ali Semin, a Middle East analyst at the Wise Men Centre for Strategic Studies in Turkey, said that one of the biggest issues regarding ISIL is how it treats women and girls.

"They have a fatwa on that issue saying that it is halal to have intercourse with women during the war. They see a right for themselves to rape women. It is very obvious that ISIL is not a religious structure or an organisation committed to the religion," Semin told SETimes.

Iraqi Yazidi MP Vian Dakheel asked in an emotional appeal in the Iraqi parliament this month for immediate assistance to repel ISIL from the Yazidi towns of Sinjar and Zumar, where thousands were killed and hundreds of thousands were forced to flee into the mountains without food and water.

"Our women are used as the concubines and sold in the markets," Dakheel told the parliament. "We are being butchered under the banner of 'There is no God but Allah,'" she added.

Gözde Özköse, a single young Turkish woman in her 30s, told SETimes that she was very emotional while watching a video of a Yezidi woman mourning that ISIL had taken the community's daughters.

"I cannot believe...