Women object to new draft law on marriage

I have an objection to the new draft law.

I have an objection to authorizing the muftis to conduct marriages.

With each new move, lives of women and girls are becoming more difficult.

Women are being repelled, women are being completely ignored.

She has gone towards being viewed as a decorative item.

The civil law was accepted in 1926 in this country.

Equality of women and men was ensured 80 years ago.

Civil marriages became compulsory. Monogamy was obliged for men. Women were given the right to choose their own profession. Women could testify in court after the civil law. Again by means of the civil law, equality has been given to both men and women on inheritance and divorce cases.

The saying, “The man is the chief of the household” was taken out of the law in the 2000’s.

These have all been good achievements.

The article stipulating “Man’s permission is required in order to work” was removed.

Civil law guaranteed women to freely live, work and use their rights.

But over the years, we have had a run of bad luck.

The first crack to break the vase was the Supreme Court’s decision “cancelling the civil marriage restriction before conducting a religious marriage,” in 2015.

That is to say a man and woman could have a religious marriage—and the age of the woman is not given any importance—she can be the age of a child.

Abstaining from a civil marriage, did not require any more penal sanction.

That paved the way to go to 81 different provinces in Turkey and conducting religious marriages with 81 people on the same day.

On top of that, these types of things are not being controlled, because there is no control mechanism.
Everything is permissible for men!

174/4, one of the unchangeable articles of the Constitution says that “Civil law guarantees the stipulation that the contract for marriage is done in front of a civil officer responsible for conducting marriages.”

So what is happening?

With this new draft being discussed for days, sharing the authority given to municipalities by the civil law will be shared with the institutions whose actual work area is religion.

The authority given to müftis to conduct a marriage is not acceptable.

For one thing, it is against the Constitution.

Because as it is stated in the Constitution, marriage is not a religious procedure but a civil procedure...

Rules of Civil Law must be applied...

If you still want, you can conduct a religious marriage over the civil marriage, nobody minds...

But why would the müftis conduct your marriage?

There are long waiting lines at the municipalities; they say to argue in favor of the change.

No way!

It remains an unpleasant draft for all intents and purposes...

Let’s say it is accepted...

People prepared their documents to conduct civil marriages and went to the müftis.

Where will the müftis conduct the marriage?

Will there be wedding saloons built for müftis?

They say, “We will give the authority to imams as well!”

Ok, but where are the imams?

At mosques.

So in this case, the mosques will be used as the new wedding saloons?

This draft has not been sent to the ministry of justice or the ministry of family and social policies.

Some people have prepared it in some backroom and brought it to the table. It has not been consulted with civil society or university teachers...

There is no survey, no research on it.

But there is a draft law!

Therefore, we object...

And until the end, we will...

We will resist these outdated faits accomplis.