Turkey:Bill to Legalise child rape if the attackers married their victims, has Failed passage.

A bill that  could have seen child-sex convictions overturned if rapists married their victims has been withdrawn following a huge public backlash. The proposed law in Turkey would have seen convicted sex attackers freed from prison.

Large huge crowds took to the streets in capital Ankara to protest the bill, which critics said would legitimise rape.

The country's Prime Minister, Binali Yildirim, said today that the bill was being withdrawn following the outcry. If the bill had passed, it would have permitted the release from prison of men guilty of assaulting a minor if the act was committed without 'force, threat, or any other restriction on consent' and if the aggressor 'marries the victim'.

Yildirim said at a news conference in Istanbul: 'We are taking this bill in the parliament back to the commission in order to allow for the broad consensus the president requested, and to give time for the opposition parties to develop their proposals. 'This commission will evaluate and take into account all sides and surely a solution will be found.'

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had called for a compromise to be found on the bill, which was expected to be put in front of parliament today after it was approved at an initial reading on Thursday. Opposition parties from across the political spectrum had heavily criticised the bill. Thousands of people called for the bill to be withdrawn in angry protests over the weekend, and the withdrawal of the bill marks a rare concession to popular opposition by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) had called for the bill to be withdrawn, and has vowed to go to the constitutional court to block it. But the Turkish government has insisted it was trying to help families in which the men involved were not rapists or sexual aggressors, and who were unaware of the law. The legal age of consent in Turkey is 18, but child marriage is widespread, especially in the southeast. Yildirim today insisted that the proposals sought to rectify the situation for 3,800 families who 'are forced to grow up without the love of their father' - usually because they are in prison - and 'paying for the mistakes of their mothers and fathers'.

As well as opposition activists, the bill had also met with criticism from the pro-government Women's and Democracy Association (KADEM), whose deputy chairman is Erdogan's younger daughter Sumeyye Erdogan Bayraktar. It said in a statement on Friday that one of the bill's biggest problems would be proving legally what constituted force or consent.

Campaigners have long accused the government of failing to do enough to stamp out child marriage and of paying more attention to pushing up the birth rate. Erdogan in June this year urged women to have at least three children and once described birth control as treason. The Prime Minister had said on Friday: 'There are those who got married under age. They don't know the law, then they have kids, the father goes to jail and the children are alone with their mother.' He said this left families 'broken'.

'If there would be marriages like this from now on, they will in no way be tolerated,' he said, adding an estimated 3,000 families would be affected by the proposal and that the legislation would only be applied retrospectively. Opponents to the proposal including lawmakers, dozens of rights groups, women's associations and child NGOs swiftly condemned the legislation, saying it was a normalisation of underage marriage. 'Sexual abuse is a crime and there is no consent in it. This is what the AK Party fails to understand,' Ozgur Ozel, a senior lawmaker with the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) told a press conference. 'Seeking the consent of a child is something that universal law does not provide for.' The controversy became a top-trending topic on Twitter in Turkey, under the hashtag, '#rape cannot be legitimized#'.