Official Turkish Body Said it was OK for Girls to Marry at 9, Claims it was Only Following Islam

The Caliphication of Turkey

Turkish schoolchildren in Ankara / Reuters / Umit Bektas

Turkey’s opposition have demanded a parliamentary investigation into the Directorate of Religious Affairs, an influential government department, after it proclaimed that Islamic Law approved of boys marrying at 12 and girls at 9.

In an online religious glossary intended for the public released earlier this week, Diyanet, as the body is known, stated that these are the earliest ages for children to reach adolescence, and once the threshold of emotional and physical maturity is crossed, they must be allowed to marry “to save themselves from adultery.”

Child rape is preferable to adultery in Islam.

The statement ignited an immediate firestorm of opposition from politicians, women's rights activists, and secularists.

"The Turkish Civil Code clearly states that adulthood begins at the age of 18. Early marriages violate children's rights, women's rights, human rights. As CHP MPs we ask parliament to investigate child marriages," said Murat Bakan, a deputy from the main opposition party on Twitter.

In the city of Trabzon, female protesters staged a demonstration holding placards reading, “Stop exploitation of children!” while in Izmir, the banners proclaimed, “Child marriage is a crime.”

The legal marriage age in Turkey is 18, with exceptions for 17-year-olds with parental consent, and 16 year-olds with a court-issued permit.

Diyanet has taken down its original entry, clarifying that it “had never approved child marriages and never will” and insisting it was merely interpreting Islamic scriptures. It also emphasized that “consent” was a necessary condition of any union.

A nine year old cannot give consent!

But the outrage, which has included calls and a Twitter hashtag campaign for Diyanet to be shut down, highlights the long-running controversies of underage marriage and Islamization in Turkey.

An academic study last year, estimated that as many as one in three Turkish marriages involve a partner who is under 18. The vast majority of the children involved are women, who are disproportionately likely to be poor, illiterate, living in rural areas, and later subjected to abuse and exploitation.

As if they could give consent!!!

There is concern that in conjunction with November’s mufti law – in which the ruling Islamist AKP party allowed sanctioned clerics, rather than state officials, to register marriages – will legitimize traditional child bride unions, reversing decades of progress.

Meanwhile, Diyanet, which was once a secular watchdog that oversaw restrictions on religious proselytizing, has, according to its critics, morphed into a powerful propaganda tool for the Islamist government.

Erdogan is slowly, patiently tuning Turkey into his own Caliphate.

Its budget has ballooned under former PM and current President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It has attracted scorn for its published rulings, including a (later withdrawn) fatwa that stated a father can desire his daughter, and another, that said it was sufficient for a man to “see his wife as his mother or sister” to divorce her.

Wow! Who Saw That Coming? Turkish Government Listens to People!

Turkey withdraws bill after protests over

child-sexual assault clause

Rare concession to popular will comes after critics say freeing offenders from jail if they married their victims would legitimise rape

Women protesting in Ankara last weekend. One placard reads: ‘Rape cannot be pardoned.’ Photograph: Adem Altan/AFP/Getty

Kareem Shaheen, The Guardian

Turkey’s government has withdrawn a controversial bill that would have granted amnesty to some men convicted of child sex assault if they married their victims.


Erdogan's daughter Dep Chief Woman's Rights Group

The announcement on the bill, a rare concession to popular opposition in the country, came after street protests at the weekend and criticism from civil society groups, including a women’s rights organisation whose deputy chief is President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s daughter, Sümeyye Erdoğan Bayraktar.

The proposed amnesty for some child sex offenders was part of a larger bill approved by lawmakers in a hearing to reform the criminal code. It would have suspended the sentences of men convicted of sexual assault of a minor if they married their victims and could prove the act was carried out without force or “restriction on consent”.

The Turkish prime minister, Binali Yıldırım, had said the bill would be withdrawn in its current form and revised, but the justice minister, Bekir Bozdağ, later said the government would not seek to table a new proposal on the matter.

“If the political parties achieve a broad consensus about this issue in the future, then it can come to our agenda again, but the issue is now closed,” he said, speaking at the parliament in Ankara.

Rights groups had condemned the bill, and weekend protests drew thousands of people. The UN had also criticised it, saying it would would weaken Turkey’s ability to combat sexual abuse and child marriage.

“It would create a perception of impunity in favour of perpetrators of such child rights violations,” Unicef said. “In addition, it would increase the risk for further victimisation of the child if she marries the perpetrator of the sexual abuse.”

In his first public comments on the amendment, Erdoğan earlier signalled that it should be withdrawn and that lawmakers ought to seek a bill that had “broad” backing from society.

“I see great benefit in solving this problem in a broad consensus, taking into account criticism and recommendation from different sections of society,” Erdogan told the state-run Anadolu news agency.

Did Erdogan fall on his head? Does his daughter have that much influence over him that he behaves out of character? Or has the fact that he has arrested everyone who might have ever thought a negative thought about him leave him with the knowledge that protesters might genuinely be concerned about what they are protesting rather than being pawns of his enemies? Whatever the story is, it looks good on him and might even give some hope to Americans and their concern over Ivanka Trump's influence over her father.

Sümeyye Erdoğan -  London School of Economics and Political Science (Hmmm, wonder what her ambitions are?)

The ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) said the particularly controversial element of bill was aimed at resolving the custom of child marriage common in rural areas of the country, and would not pardon rapists.

Researchers from Gaziantep University in 2013 had estimated that one in three marriages in Turkey involved a person under 18, and that the vast majority were illiterate.

The bill would target about 3,000 men who are jailed for breaking the law on child marriage after conducting a religious ceremony with the family and girl’s “consent”. Critics have pointed out that underage girls cannot give meaningful consent.

At least not a consent free of considerable pressure.

Well done, Erdogan! Never thought those words would ever come out of my fingers.