2023-07-17 06:12:02
Sitting on her sofa, in front of a flat screen the size of a wall, Elif Güler, 64, spends her old age watching films. Once her brother told her that she should write a screenplay about her life. Listening to him, there is indeed enough to fill a soap opera: forced fiancée at 12, married at 14, first child at 15. To this script, we must add this recent outcome: she has just encouraged her daughter, 40, to divorce after a year and a half of marriage. Under her purple veil, Elif Güler smiles thinking about it. “I opened my eyes, I was a woman. At least my daughter will have known, free, the time of youth. »
A still common practice
This Monday, Elif Güler will follow from her flat screen the decision of the Turkish courts in the so-called “HKG” case. Yusuf Ziya Gümüsel, head of a foundation of the Ismailaga Islamic community, is accused of forcibly marrying his 6-year-old daughter, called “HKG” for the duration of the trial, to a 29-year-old man. Her father and her husband are in custody for aggravated child sexual abuse.
Revealed by the press, this scandal caused a lot of noise in Turkey at the beginning of 2023, before being eclipsed by the earthquake. He brought up the thorny issue of child marriages, which are still common in Turkey. One in five women was forcibly married before the age of 18, among the 16 million inhabitants of the metropolis of Istanbul, according to data from the municipality. Their number is decreasing, but in some corners of Anatolia, it still concerns a sixth of new registered marriages.
Out of control
This type of business lands in the columns of the newspapers today, but Elif Güler thinks that, in her time, her case would not even have been worth a brief. In Malatya, where she grew up, a child marriage did not raise eyebrows. A neighbor had expressed his doubts. The doctor in charge of her first delivery had passed a soap to the parents. That’s all. And that hadn’t changed her pain: three days of labour, cesareans not being common then, to deliver a baby she didn’t know what to do with. “I welcomed him as my little brother, not as a son. I played with him, my mother took care of the rest. »
According to Turkish law, a girl cannot be legally married before the age of 18, 16 if the parents or a court agree. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has spoken out clearly against this practice. But since 2016, the repeal by the Constitutional Court of an article of law requiring religious marriages to be preceded by a civil union has blurred the message. There is no longer anything to prevent families from marrying their children religiously before they reach adulthood, free from state control, and from marrying them civilly once they reach majority.
Their daughters after them
The “HKG” case has brought to light the dysfunctions of justice. A first investigation, opened in 2012, was closed for lack of prosecution by the prosecution. The young girl, placed under state protection in 2020, had to wait two years for justice to make arrests. “In a system where a singer can be sent behind bars because of a term used on stage, the one who raped a 6-year-old girl can walk free”notes Sedat Erdin, columnist for the pro-power newspaper Liberty.
In the street where Elif Güler lives, a downgraded area of the Bayrakli district, in Izmir, on the Aegean coast, most of her neighbors have, after them, arranged marriages for their underage daughters. “Poverty drives them. They have not received an education, these women. » Elif Güler wanted to learn cooking, make it her profession, “because in the kitchen we talk to people all day”. Instead, she cooked for this unknown husband, so different – calm where she is on the move – until his death, swept away by the Covid-19 in the spring of 2020. Over the years, she started to feel sorry for him. Hands clasped, she says he looked like, with his protruding jaw, those old Italian actors she sees scrolling on her flat screen.
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Globally, one in five girls married before the age of 18
child marriage, according to Unicef, means any official marriage or any unofficial union between a child under the age of 18 and an adult or another child.
This practice is declining but remains widespread: globally, one in four girls was married before reaching adulthood a decade ago, compared to around one in five today. Niger, the Central African Republic, Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea are the countries most affected.
The Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations call for global action to eradicate this violation of human rights by 2030.
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