European court decision prompts women to demand changes to ID cards

The European Court of Human Rights recently ruled that listing religion on identity cards, whether obligatory or optional, is in violation of human rights. The ruling brought the issue of redesigning ID cards into the spotlight.

Women’s organizations consider this a good time to discuss other problems plaguing national ID cards, including the inability to indicate the bearer’s mother’s full name, women’s inability to retain their maiden names after marriage, a color difference for men and women and a box bearing one’s marital status.

“Discussions going on about ID cards are a good opportunity to get rid of discriminatory practices against women when it comes to the cards,” the UN Population Fund’s Meltem Ağduk told Today’s Zaman.

She added that women recently began to discuss the kinds of changes that need to be made to ID cards and shared their experiences on this issue. “For example, one woman told us that she had gotten divorced and then began to use her last name again. She went to the swearing-in ceremony of her son who was doing his compulsory military service at the time, but after the oath taking, she was not allowed to take her son out of the military base despite families having the right to do so because their last names differed,” Ağduk said.

After getting divorced, many women, she said, have to carry with them a civil registry receipt in order to avoid facing difficulties when they travel with their children. Because their last names differ, the women are sometimes treated like child kidnappers.

Women’s organizations also say giving pink IDs to women and blue ones to men is a very sexist approach that reinforces the classic stereotypes about male-female differences.

Women also want to have the marital status box removed from ID cards. “This runs against privacy laws. Does everyone have to know your marital status? In Turkey, the marital status of women is becoming a source of discrimination, with people ready to judge women based on their marital status,” said Hülya Gülbahar from the Association for Education and Supporting Women Candidates (KA-DER).

She noted that until recently ID cards also indicated “divorced” and “widowed” as statuses and that women’s organizations fought to change this. In rural areas, however, this continues to be the case, Ağduk added.

She said that instead of indicating only the mother’s first name on ID cards, including the full name of both the mother and the father may help prevent problems that arise after divorce.

Gülbahar added that Article 187 of the Turkish Civil Code has to be amended because it puts restrictions on the last names of women. This article indicates that women can use their last name after marriage but must also carry their husband’s last name.

Women also demand that this article be changed to allow each family to choose whether to go by the wife’s or the husband’s last name as the family name and to allow women to keep their maiden names after marriage. Furthermore, they propose that children should carry the last names of both parents as long as they are minors.

A local court recently petitioned the Constitutional Court to cancel Article 187 of the Civil Code with the claim that it runs against the principle of equality. The local court also suggested that Article 187 of the Civil Code is against the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).