Turkey court allows couples religious marriage without a legal civil marriage, first 'Islamist' step towards allowing 'Child marriage'?

Source picture:  'Too Young to Wed'

Turkey court allows couples religious marriage without a legal civil marriage, first 'Islamist' step towards allowing 'Child marriage'? (AJ).

A decision by Turkey's top court to allow citizens to be religiously married without a legally binding civil marriage has triggered an uproar among the country's legal and human rights circles, who argue that the move would threaten the rights of women and children in the country.

The court's judgement decided on Wednesday and announced on Friday argued that it was not possible to indict solely religiously married couples, while it was legal for a woman and a man to live together in Turkey without a religious wedding.

"While individuals practically living together and having children without a religious ceremony or wedding are not being punished, punishing people who made choices in terms of their private lives and had religious marriages displays the [regulation's] intemperance on the issue," the Constitutional Court said.

The judgement has been slammed by many in Turkey from government officials to lawyers and human rights groups. In a televised interview on Friday, Aysenur Islam, Turkey's minister for family and social policies, said that a legislation or repeal of a legislation which would encourage underage marriages could not be tolerated by her ministry.

"Now that this ruling has been decided, we will have to work [on a new legislation] to prevent children under the age of 18 to be married off through unofficial marriages," she said.

"Everybody knows that underage marriage is illegal in Turkey. And the number of such marriages has significantly decreased, but we have to keep our campaign against them."

Turkish human rights lawyer Ergin Cinmen told Al Jazeera that the court’s judgement is legally intact in terms of national regulations in Turkey, but it is contradictory to certain aspects of the public law, principle of equality, principle of social state and certain social realities in the country.

"The principles of social state and state of law put foremost importance on children's and women's rights," he said. "If you get rid of the obligation of civil marriage before religious marriage, this will cause problems in terms of children's and women's rights coming from their links to the family, particularly regarding inheritance rights. Although it is legally intact, the verdict is not compatible with certain aspects of the general principle of law."

The Federation of Turkish Women's Associations said in a declaration on Saturday that the judgement would increase the number of men marrying multiple women, underage marriages, paid marriages, and infringements of women's rights in relation to marriages.

The declaration added that the group would take the case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Hmmm......AKP destroying Attaturk's legacy step by step.Read the full story here.