The role of a man has been to take care of his family for many years in Turkey. This itself determines the woman and her children’s place in the society: the ones that need to be taken care of. This mentality leads to many problems in the more traditional areas of the country such as early marriage and polygamy. Females are raised marriage-oriented and that is a challenge they still have to face today in Turkey.
By forcing their young girls to marry, fathers are preventing them from having a bright future which is their own, a future that is not dependent on anybody such as their husbands or maybe their forthcoming baby. According to the website Girls Not Brides, Turkey has one of the highest rates of child marriage in Europe with approximately 14% of the girls married before the age of 18, and it is not even including the unregistered marriages. Since the girls are too young to cope with the burden of being a wife and maybe even a mother, this causes all sorts of issues, both psychological and physical. The girls are not as encouraged to pursue a career as they should be and simply are expected to satisfy their society’s decision for them. In this matter, of course, the ones who fail to do so are in a situation in which they might be exposed to violence by their husbands. In some cases, out of depression, there might even be suicide incidents. A girl’s luck does not turn when she grows up either, since even though it is illegal to do so, her husband can marry another woman by religious marriage. This shows in the more poor and rural sides of the country, how oppressed women are in the society and how girls are raised to marry someone rather than to pursue their passions.
The main reasons include the regions being poor, close-minded and illiterate. Since there is the tradition of “bride price” in Turkey, some poor families are left in a position in which they have to give their girls to men who are more wealthy than themselves so that they can get money to continue their lives. In the traditional sense, there is this other custom in Anatolia called “beşik kertmesi” which basically means for a father choosing whom his girl will marry from the day she is born. The future husband and the future wife grow up to marry each other and do so when they are told to. What is behind all this is, of course, illiteracy. Since the girls are oppressed for a long time, they cannot easily find the courage to go against the society, and they accept their roles. This is the most touching reason of all because this way, they are wasted when they could have gotten much more out of their lives than just being a housewife. If they knew what they were losing, maybe they would at least try to fight, or if the fathers knew what they were actually causing by handing their girls to other men, they would put a stop to this.
Fortunately, some projects are out there to give girls a chance of pursuing their passions. One example can be The Kardelenler Project as they are helping girls to go to school by giving them scholarships and support. The pursuance of this project and others which show people in the rural side of the country how education is important are possible solutions to this problem. Along with this idea of educating the families about education, the regions should be controlled by the authorities to keep these incidents from happening. After all, all the girls deserve to live their lives as they want to.
Citation for the statistic:
"Child Marriage around the World: TURKEY." Girls Not Brides. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 May 2016. <http://www.girlsnotbrides.org/child-marriage/turkey/>.