Turkey’s top religious body sparks outrage over women’s inheritance rights
Women rights activists say that the body is increasingly targeting women, challenging secular law and fostering conditions for gender-based violence.
ANKARA — A Friday sermon by Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs, Diyanet, promoting unequal inheritance shares for daughters has sparked fresh outrage from women’s rights groups for defying the country’s civil code.
“Changing the inheritance measure set by our Almighty Lord is contrary to divine justice," the sermon shared on the Diyanet’s website on Friday read. "Therefore, depriving daughters of inheritance, or daughters not being content with the right allotted to them by God, constitutes a violation of others’ rights before God."
Under Turkey’s civil code, adopted in 1926 after the founding of the modern secular republic, sons and daughters were granted equal inheritance rights, marking a departure from the Ottoman Empire’s Islamic inheritance law, which typically entitled male heirs to twice the shares of female heirs.
The sermon sparked outrage from women’s rights groups and the political opposition, amplifying criticism of the Diyanet as a state-run body increasingly accused of undermining women’s freedoms and rights.
