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Wife of Turkey Foreign Minister says women’s rights improving

The Turkish Foreign Ministry sponsored an event on Monday to demonstrate concern about violence against women.
Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu (C) and his wife Sare Davutoglu (L) walk with mayor Vladimir Talevski (R) in the centre of Bitola March 25, 2010. Davutoglu is on a two-day official visit to Macedonia. REUTERS/Ognen Teofilovski (MACEDONIA - Tags: POLITICS) - RTR2C263
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Turkish officials under the patronage of the wife of Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Monday, Nov. 18, presented a flurry of statistics showing reduced poverty and more official attention to crimes against women since the ruling AKP government took office more than a decade ago.

But the hour-long session and buffet lunch, to which the Turkish Embassy in Washington invited several dozen prominent American women and diplomats, was notable for one statistic that was lacking: the number of violent assaults on Turkish women each year.

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