Women take to the street to protect their rights vested with the civil law

Nazan Moroğlu

We, as Union of Istanbul Women’s Organizations (IKKB), launched a petition under the title “Stand Up For Women’s Rights In Civil Code” six months ago, aiming to raise awareness about the regression in women’s rights in Turkey and remind the public once again of the rights obtained with the civil law.

In the 1990s, İKKB launched another petition calling for the family law under the civil law to be changed in accordance with the principle of gender equality and submitted more than 100,000 signatures to the presidency of the Turkish parliament.

Unfortunately, we observe that the vested rights are regressing step by step. Our government has had a mentality that excluded a belief in the equality of women and men. So we want to draw the upcoming government’s attention to these issues and stress that gender equality is a fundamental issue of democracy.

As the IKKB, we say:

* Respect to minimum legal age for marriage should be implemented, to stop “child marriages.”

* Civil law, which guarantees rights such as monogamy and official marriage, should not be disregarded

* Gender equality cannot exist when the principle of a secular state of law is ignored. Gender equality is a fundamental principle of democracy.

* We reject the Constitutional Court’s decision which has annulled a law criminalizing the performance of religious marriages without civil marriages, because it will increase child brides.

Therefore, we aimed to collect 1 million signatures within the “Stand Up For Women’s Rights In the Civil Code” campaign. It gained 1.5 million supporters through signatures collected by our affiliated organizations, as well as through Twitter, Facebook and other social media.

We will be rallying and carrying baskets filled with more than 1 million signatures on Saturday, June 20th.

The public is invited to our march, which will be joined by famous artists and start from Şişli’s Atatürk Museum at 1 p.m.

To protect and enhance our vested rights, 

To stand by our revolutionary civil law, 

We JOIN HANDS and say “Keep the struggle alive!”

Nazan Moroğlu
İKKB Coordinator

About Nazan Moroğlu

A graduate of the Law Faculty of Istanbul University, Nazan Moroğlu specializes in gender law. As a pioneering gender law expert in Turkey, she has been giving lectures in the field of gender law since 2001 at the Faculty of Yeditepe University Law School.

Moroğlu is the founder of the Women’s Rights Commission of the Union of the Turkish Bar Associations.
She has been a member of the board and president of the Turkish Jurist Women’s Association (which is a member of the international “Des Femmes Des Carrieres Juridiques – FICJ); was President of the Turkish University Women’s Association and the Women’s Studies Association.

She is an activist and coordinator of the Union of Istanbul Women’s Organizations (İKKB) since 2003.
 
Her publications include “The Surname of the Woman” (1999); “The First Decade in Women’s Studies” (1999); “Property Regimes among Spouses according to the New Turkish Civil Code” (2002); “Women’s role in achieving a Sustainable Future: Education, Urbanization, Violence and Human Rights” (2014); and “Child Brides” (2014).