Turkey’s Constitutional Court is unlikely to see a similar case any time soon, but there are many similarities between the situation in Utah and in Turkey. In both places, polygamy is still widely tolerated. Indeed, in Turkey, its practice has, until now, never been actively challenged by the state despite a ban in place since 1926. While in the US, an estimated 40,000 polygamists have to remain discreet about their illegal lifestyle, in rural Turkey, particularly in the East, polygamous men proudly pose for reporters with dozens of offspring, cheerfully admitting they cannot name them all. Last December, the supervisor of an EU-sponsored Family Planning program was astonished to meet a man with four wives and 42 children, with a 43rd on the way in Muş province. Who can afford to meet the costs of such a family or provide decent education for all the children? State Minister Nimet Cubukçu estimated that up to 1 million people in Turkey live in polygamous families.
In the US, polygamy has been featured in the popular TV series “Big Love,” which entertains viewers with the bickering of three “sister wives” and the demands they place on their husband. But the Supreme Court case is highlighting a darker side of polygamy, also found in Turkey.
The few polygamists who have been prosecuted in Utah in recent years, including Rodney Holm, who filed the Supreme Court appeal, were charged not with marrying multiple wives, but with child abuse and the statutory rape of teenage girls, handed over in arranged marriages.
In Turkey too, polygamy often involves young girls being sold by their parents to older men. It is part of a set of traditions that includes forced marriages, the exchange of wives (berdel) and underage marriages, now increasingly questioned by women, and men, from the local community.
Although Turkish women successfully fought to gain equal rights in the new Civil Code of 2002, women who are second or third wives and those who are first wives but have only contracted a religious marriage do not benefit from these reforms. They cannot seek a divorce because they are financially and socially dependent on their husband. Worse still, many of them cannot even demand custody of their children in the event of separation because they are often registered under the name of the first, legal, wife.
Traditional practices are increasingly coming under scrutiny in Turkey and attitudes are slowly changing. A prosecutor in Diyarbakir recently called for two fathers to be sentenced to 34 years of imprisonment for arranging the forced union of their 14 year-old children to settle a family feud over the elopement of older siblings.
But Turkish legislation still focuses on an ideal notion of the official family while ignoring other commonly accepted forms of marriage, which are very much part of Turkey’s reality to this day. These are too often left in a legal void. This was evident again recently when the Justice Commission of the Turkish Parliament refused to broaden the definition of the family to extend protection against domestic violence to women in non-official relationships. In short, the message was: Women who do not own an official “family record book” need not apply for legal protection. Yet it is rarely the women themselves who opt for non-official marriages.
