Yakin Ertürk (born 1945)[1] 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.
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".
[4][5] 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).
[3] She rejoined the faculty of METU in 2002,[5] 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.
In 2003, she was appointed as the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women, and held this position for six years.