Turkish court stirs marriage debate

Turkey’s Constitutional Court announced May 29 that civil marriage is no longer a legal requirement for religiously married citizens, a decision that will have serious social implications. Many critics, especially women, fret that the ruling will pave the way for more violations of women's and children’s rights.

The court based its decision on a case from 2014, when a criminal court in the Turkish province of Erzurum appealed a case to the Constitutional Court involving a religiously married couple without a civil marriage and the imam who carried out the ceremony.

Prior to this latest decision, Paragraph 5 of Article 230 of the Turkish Criminal Code dictated a sentence of two to six months in prison for individuals who lived together after a religious wedding without a civil marriage. In the same article, Paragraph 6 also gave two to six months' imprisonment to an individual (typically an imam) who carried out a religious wedding ceremony without verifying a civil marriage with official documents.

But while last week’s decision annuls the above paragraphs by a majority 12-4 vote, the Constitutional Court had unanimously ruled the opposite in a 1999 case appealed by the Bursa Criminal Court. At the time, the court confirmed that according to the Turkish Criminal Code, religiously married couples that lived together were committing a crime, but individuals who lived together without any religious ceremony were not. The court then explained its decision on the basis of upholding the Turkish Civil Code and on the state’s responsibility to protect women and children, as described in Article 41 of the Turkish Constitution.