Yakin Ertürk

Yakin Ertürk (born 1945) is a Turkish former United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and board member of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), and was a professor of Sociology.

Early life and education
Ertürk has a B.A. from Hacettepe University (1969) and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Cornell University: her thesis (1980) was on "Rural change in Southeastern Anatolia : an analysis of rural poverty and power structure as a reflection of center-periphery relations in Turkey".

Career
Ertürk held posts at King Saud University (1979-1982), Hacettepe University (1983—1986) and Middle East Technical University (METU) (1986-1987) before joining the United Nations in 1997 to become Director of the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW) in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (1997-1999) and then Director of The Division for the Advancement of Women at UN headquarters in New York (1999-2001). She rejoined the faculty of METU in 2002, and was a professor in the Department of Sociology until her retirement, and was also the chair of the university's Gender and Women's Study Programme. She was a Visiting Global Associate, Rutgers University, the Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL) and the Institute for Women’s Leadership (IWL) Consortium (15 Sept. 2017-15 April 	2018).

In 2003, she was appointed as the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women, and held this position for six years. 2009-2013, she served on the Council of Europe Committee on the Prevention of Torture.