Alarmed by a 38% increase in the divorce rate over the past decade, Turkey’s Family and Social Policies Ministry has rolled up its sleeves to provide couples with counseling under a project named “Divorce Process Counseling Service.” Under the new arrangement, couples that file for divorce are first sent to a “family counselor” by the court. The ministry has opened counseling centers in all of Turkey’s 81 provinces, where couples receive at least four hours of therapy before making their final decision. The process involves three stages: pre-divorce, court hearings and post-divorce.

Some may raise objections that the subject is none of the state’s business and that the minister and the judge should not meddle in private lives. Others may argue that the practice is designed to discourage women from divorcing abusive husbands. Yet, the ministry is bent on saving marriages by prolonging the divorce process. Moreover, it is unclear whether couples are offered therapy or counseling.

Prominent Turkish psychiatrist Cengiz Gulec, former head of Hacettepe University's department of psychiatry and founder of the Ankara-based Madalyon Psychiatric Center, doubts that state-sponsored counseling will be of any use.

“It won’t work. The ministry is keeping up appearances. The people working at those centers are inexperienced. Marriage counseling is not something like a vaccination. I don’t think those centers will be efficient and useful,” Gulec told Al-Monitor. “The conservative political mentality [of the government] sanctifies marriage. And because things have developed in a way contrary to their concepts of family and marriage, they’ve come up with what they think is a service.”