Turkey, in particular, is seeing a record number of divorces, as both women and men are looking for a way out of unhappy and sometimes abusive marriages. Over the past fifteen years, the divorce rate has risen from under 15 percent of marriages to nearly a quarter of them. Domestic violence is almost always cited as a leading reason by Turkish women seeking a divorce. This is true even outside urban areas, which have also seen a slight growth in divorce cases; increasingly, women are willing to seek divorces in smaller, religious towns such as Konya, in central Anatolia, where Nebiye was raised. More of these girls and women also now have access to education and online information.
Ipek Bozkurt, an outspoken women’s rights activist and Istanbul-based divorce lawyer, told me that one reason for this change in social norms is that more women are working, and they are more aware of their rights. “They’re so fed up with their marriages and the treatment they receive, the treatment their kids receive, all the physical and psychological pressure that they have suffered,” she said. “They’re just willing to let that marriage go.” [...]
In November, speaking to a roomful of his women supporters at a “gender justice” summit, Erdoğan boasted of presiding over an increase in the proportion of women in the workforce, up from 28 percent in 2002 to 38 percent today. At the same conference, Zehra Zümrüt Selçuk, the minister of family, labor, and social services, insisted that the government was working hard to encourage marriage and prevent divorce, but she balanced her message with an appeal to women’s growing desire for independence. “Our primary goal,” she said, “is to minimize and solve the problems encountered by the family and to protect its unity without ignoring the rights of the individuals.” [...]
It is true that femicide has grown steadily in Turkey over the last decade, with more than 2,000 women killed by their partners. Feminists say that the number of murders is up because more women are resisting inequality and abuse in their marriage, and reporting domestic violence more. Unfortunately, some men are retaliating with deadly violence, said Gülsüm Kav, the co-founder of We Will Stop Femicides, a women’s group that advocates for victims’ families and independently counts women homicides in Turkey. But the solution, activists argue, is not what the government says—that women should stay in abusive marriages and try to work things out with their husbands—but legal reform.
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