Opening the audience’s eyes to the dehumanizing practices of child marriages in Turkey, Cem Vardar ’15 gave a BRACE presentation last Friday hoping to raise awareness for and educate students about the harsh reality that is the life of many Turkish girls.
In his presentation, Vardar defined child marriage as an official marriage or unofficial union in which at least one of the spouses are under 18 years old. He stated that 217,000 Turkish girls between the ages of 15 and 18 were married, with the regions of highest rate of child marriage being the poorest, most underdeveloped and most patriarchal communities in Turkey.
“The dehumanizing practices of child marriages is reflective of the deep wounds resting in the social fabric of Turkish society,” Vardar said.
Vardar identified economic pressure as a contributing factor to the profileration of underaged marriage in Turkey, drawing a correlation between education and vulnerability to child marriage.
“The percent of underage girls who married illiterate is 47.2%. The more educated the girls are, the less vulnerable they become to child marriages. Girls from poor families are twice as likely to become victims of this practice,” he said.
In addition, Vardar said that families avoid the possible cost of raising their girls by arranging their marriages to men in exchange for bride prices, which he said were often inversely proportional to the age of the female spouse.
As a result of this practice, Vardar said that families placed their own daughters in positions in which they were deprived of their economic independence, personal agency, educational potential and most importantly, their childhood. He also mentioned that the discrepancies in the Turkish judicial system regarding child marriages allowed families to keep the practice alive.
Quoting popular colloquial phrases such as “when girls are in the cradle their [bride price] should be ready,” Vardar demonstrated how deeply integrated child marriages are in Turkish society.
Vardar said that the foremost consequence of child marriages was that it feminized poverty by depriving girls of their future opportunities and economic independence. Similarly, he said that they curtailed future job opportunities for girls and perpetuated a cycle of poverty.
Vardar underscored the damaging effects child marriage has on girls’ sexuality.
“The limitations imposed on girls’ sexual self-expression serve to deplete the dynamism of the sexuality by placing [it] within a rigid mold. Deprived of their sexual dynamism, girls can’t investigate or discover their sexual identities,” he said.
“This practice symbolically kills girls and turns their bodies into inert and proprietary instruments… the practice of child marriage is hurting not just Turkey but the entire humanity as a whole,” said Vardar.
