Dutch traveller 'escapes sexual assault' in western Turkey

A Dutch traveller has said she escaped an attempted sexual assault in western Turkey, breaking her arm.

The 28-year-old Jiska Nina Van Gerner, who started a long distance walk in the Netherlands last year and recently arrived in Turkey from Romania, got lost on the highway between Bursa and Ankara, Anadolu Agency reported May 16. 

According to her account, a motorcyclist offered to take her where she wanted. After accepting the offer, the woman said she jumped off the motorcycle in fear of sexual assault when the man started to drive into a forest.

A Turkish truck driver found Gerner crying with a broken arm near the highway entrance of the Mesudiye neighborhood in the Bursa province's ?negöl district, the report added. As Gerner was hospitalized, Turkish police detained the suspect, a 19-year-old man identified as S.Ç.

Italian performance artist and peace activist Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo, known as Pippa Bacca, was raped and murdered in western Turkey in 2008 when hitchhiking with a wedding dress from Italy to Israel as part of a world tour for world peace.

Özgecan Aslan, a 20-year-old university student, was brutally murdered in February after the attempted rape of a minibus driver in southern Turkey.

Both murders triggered huge public outcry in the country with repeated calls for legislators to aggravate sentences to stop sexual crimes and murders targeting women.