Uproar in Turkey as religious body greenlights marriage with quake orphans
Turks are outraged by the powerful Diyanet religious body ruling it permissible to marry adopted children after thousands were left orphaned by the earthquakes.
IZMIR, Turkey — A ruling by Turkey’s top religious body that it is permissible to marry one’s adopted children created a new flashpoint between the state and Turkish citizens in the wake of a series of earthquakes that left one-seventh of the country under rubble.
With the death toll in Turkey exceeding 43,000 after a series of earthquakes — the most recent striking Monday — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces one of his worst challenges ahead of the elections tentatively scheduled for May 14, though some say it may be postponed a month. The opposition’s main point of attack now centers on many Turks’ complaints that institutions such as the military and the Turkish Red Crescent, which provided crucial aid in past disasters, were rendered ineffective by cronyism or simple inefficiency during Erdogan’s 20-year reign.
