Fez, niqab now allowed in marriage photos in Turkey

Meltem Özgenç ANKARA

Turkish citizens are now allowed to pose wearing a fez or a niqab in photographs officializing their wedding, due to a new change in marriage regulations.

The most hotly debated issue in an amended article that passed into law on Feb. 10 is the new stipulation that couples would not have to acquire a “license to marry” before they can wed.

However, legal experts who spoke to daily Hürriyet on Feb. 11 pointed to another dramatic change in the regulation that has so far been overlooked.

The previous regulation had stipulated that couples must provide photos to officials before their marriage wearing “civilian clothes that are in accordance with revolutionary principles.”

The phrase “revoluationary principles” has been removed with the change in the regulation.

After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Turkey encouraged “modern clothes” from the 1920s. The fez and turban (sarık) were officially banned with a special law in 1925. In 1934, another special law banned any religious “clerical” costume for anyone apart from clerics, effectively prohibiting the burqa and the niqab.

“With the latest change in marriage regulations, now anyone will be able to pose for a photograph with a turban, a fez or a niqab, as long as their faces can be seen,” one lawyer told Hürriyet, stressing that an almost century-old official policy has been ended by the government.