Child brides in Turkey again in focus thanks to movie 'My Aunt came'.

Child brides in Turkey again in focus thanks to movie 'My Aunt came'.HT: AlAlaam.

A new movie,“Halam Geldi” (“My Aunt Came”), addresses child brides in Turkey. (trailer above)

A majority of analysts predict a tough and tense immediate future for Turkey in 2014. In such an environment, it might seem necessary to momentarily put aside seemingly less pressing matters. Yet, watching the Turkish film “My Aunt Came”  (“Halam Geldi” in Turkish, directed by Erhan Kozan), released on Jan. 3, served as a sober reminder that there can never be a bad time to continue raising awareness about child brides — one of Turkey’s deepest bleeding wounds.

Child marriage is defined as a formal marriage or informal union before age 18, and the impacts, primarily for girls, are disastrous. The main reasons for child brides are poverty, lack of education, religious belief, perceptions of gender roles in society, insufficient laws or belief that a girl is safer once married.

In the film, “My Aunt Came” refers to a code, used specifically in Anatolia to symbolize the arrival of a young girl’s first menstrual period. Unfortunately, instead of a new, natural phase in a young woman’s life, this is also recognized as a harbinger of doom; To begin her period signifies that a girl is fertile, which suggests she is of an age permissible for marriage.

The film's characters Reyhan and Huriye, who live in a border village in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, are more than just characters, as they represent myriad victims in real life across Turkey and the world.

According to the Ministry of Interior Affairs, in the last three years 134,629 persons below 18 years of age were married in Turkey, with 5,763 boys and 128,866 girls — meaning 20 times more girls than boys. 

The trend of a disproportionally higher number of underage girls is especially worrisome considering that “there is an increase of 94% in application to courts by families to ... get marriage permit[s],” according to Gulten Kaya, head of the female lawyers commission of the Union of Turkish Bar Associations.

Though the shining lights of posh Istanbul neighborhoods might blur the reality of many parts of the country, the facts remain striking and scary. 

Research, recently presented by Erhan Tunc, an assistant professor at Gaziantep University, studied child marriage in various Turkish regions. Researchers found that 82% of child brides in Turkey are illiterate.Hmmm....Another reason (As if we needed more) to keep Turkey out of the European Union.Read the full story here.