Tag: polygamy

Alcohol and Polygamy Make Headlines in Secular Turkey

By Ayla Albayrak

Election campaigns come and go, but Turkey’s culture wars, between social liberals and religious conservatives, never die.

On Wednesday, one of Turkey’s highest courts, the Council of State, struck down a government regulation banning alcohol sales at rock concerts, university festivals and other events for people under 24 years of age. The decision delighted critics who saw the regulation, which came into force in January, as overly strict or as proof that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has an Islamist worldview.

The court also struck down another part of the regulation, which had banned the sale of small 20 centiliter bottles and cans of alcohol in grocery stores, because of their easy availability to youth.

The government had said the new regulation was needed to protect the nation’s youth from the dangers of alcohol – a rationale that skeptics questioned. Unlike many other European nations, Turkey does not have a significant binge drinking problem among its youngsters. The Council of State reasoned that as Turkish law gives people over age 18 the right to drink, the regulation “restricted the legal right of people over 18 to buy and consume alcohol.”

Meanwhile, a female life coach and family advisor has caused a stir after she said in a newspaper interview that polygamy should be legalized. Sibel Uresin had been giving seminars on the family for several of Istanbul’s more conservative municipalities.

Uresin’s argument was that 85% of men are unfaithful to their wives, so it made sense to legalize their mistresses. According to a study published recently by Hacettepe University in Ankara, 187,000 women in Turkey are in de-facto polygamous marriages. The problem, said Uresin, is that second, third and fourth wives — Islam allows a man to have four – can be too easily abandoned, without legal rights. All a man has to do to divorce a wife under Islamic law is to say “I divorce you” three times.

“Men run to women who are more flirtatious and who laugh more, and women who satisfy them sexually. If I were a man, I would be polygamous,” Uresin told the Turkish newspaper HaberTurk in an interview published Tuesday. She said she told her own husband he could take more wives if he wanted to, but he hadn’t taken her up on it.

Uresin’s words caused an uproar. Women’s organizations across the country said her views were backward and conflicted with international conventions that Turkey has signed. Modern Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk banned polygamy in 1926, as a part of his Westernizing reforms. Still, multiple marriages, approved by an Imam, but not legally registered, remain relatively commonplace in Turkey’s South East in particular.

The Islamic-leaning AKP has not suggested legalizing polygamy and seemed unhappy about the furore just weeks before June 12 elections. While the party’s headquarters was silent, a spokesman for the AKP-run Eyup Municipality in Istanbul said Uresin had once held a seminar for the municipality about “interfamily communication,” but they were upset about her polygamy comments.

“She offered to give that seminar free of charge, but we will never consider having her speak here again,” the spokesman said.

via Alcohol and Polygamy Make Headlines in Secular Turkey – Emerging Europe Real Time – WSJ.

May 27, 2011
Polygamy laws expose our own hypocrisy

By Jonathan Turley

Tom Green is an American polygamist. This month, he will appeal his conviction in Utah for that offense to the United States Supreme Court, in a case that could redefine the limits of marriage, privacy and religious freedom.

If the court agrees to take the case, it would be forced to confront a 126-year-old decision allowing states to criminalize polygamy that few would find credible today, even as they reject the practice. And it could be forced to address glaring contradictions created in recent decisions of constitutional law.

For polygamists, it is simply a matter of unequal treatment under the law.

Individuals have a recognized constitutional right to engage in any form of consensual sexual relationship with any number of partners. Thus, a person can live with multiple partners and even sire children from different partners so long as they do not marry. However, when that same person accepts a legal commitment for those partners “as a spouse,” we jail them.

Likewise, someone such as singer Britney Spears can have multiple husbands so long as they are consecutive, not concurrent. Thus, Spears can marry and divorce men in quick succession and become the maven of tabloid covers. Yet if she marries two of the men for life, she will become the matron of a state prison.

Religion defines the issue

The difference between a polygamist and the follower of an “alternative lifestyle” is often religion. In addition to protecting privacy, the Constitution is supposed to protect the free exercise of religion unless the religious practice injures a third party or causes some public danger.

However, in its 1878 opinion in Reynolds vs. United States, the court refused to recognize polygamy as a legitimate religious practice, dismissing it in racist and anti-Mormon terms as “almost exclusively a feature of the life of Asiatic and African people.” In later decisions, the court declared polygamy to be “a blot on our civilization” and compared it to human sacrifice and “a return to barbarism.” Most tellingly, the court found that the practice is “contrary to the spirit of Christianity and of the civilization which Christianity has produced in the Western World.”

Contrary to the court’s statements, the practice of polygamy is actually one of the common threads between Christians, Jews and Muslims.

Deuteronomy contains a rule for the division of property in polygamist marriages. Old Testament figures such as Abraham, David, Jacob and Solomon were all favored by God and were all polygamists. Solomon truly put the “poly” to polygamy with 700 wives and 300 concubines. Mohammed had 10 wives, though the Koran limits multiple wives to four. Martin Luther at one time accepted polygamy as a practical necessity. Polygamy is still present among Jews in Israel, Yemen and the Mediterranean.

Indeed, studies have found polygamy present in 78% of the world’s cultures, including some Native American tribes. (While most are polygynists — with one man and multiple women — there are polyandrists in Nepal and Tibet in which one woman has multiple male spouses.) As many as 50,000 polygamists live in the United States.

Given this history and the long religious traditions, it cannot be seriously denied that polygamy is a legitimate religious belief. Since polygamy is a criminal offense, polygamists do not seek marriage licenses. However, even living as married can send you to prison. Prosecutors have asked courts to declare a person as married under common law and then convicted them of polygamy.

The Green case

This is what happened in the case of Green, who was sentenced to five years to life in prison. In his case, the state first used the common law to classify Green and four women as constructively married — even though they never sought a license. Green was then convicted of polygamy.

While the justifications have changed over the years, the most common argument today in favor of a criminal ban is that underage girls have been coerced into polygamist marriages. There are indeed such cases. However, banning polygamy is no more a solution to child abuse than banning marriage would be a solution to spousal abuse. The country has laws to punish pedophiles and there is no religious exception to those laws.

In Green’s case, he was shown to have “married” a 13-year-old girl. If Green had relations with her, he is a pedophile and was properly prosecuted for a child sex crime — just as a person in a monogamous marriage would be prosecuted.

The First Amendment was designed to protect the least popular and least powerful among us. When the high court struck down anti-sodomy laws in Lawrence vs. Texas, we ended decades of the use of criminal laws to persecute gays. However, this recent change was brought about in part by the greater acceptance of gay men and lesbians into society, including openly gay politicians and popular TV characters.

Such a day of social acceptance will never come for polygamists. It is unlikely that any network is going to air The Polygamist Eye for the Monogamist Guy or add a polygamist twist to Everyone Loves Raymond. No matter. The rights of polygamists should not be based on popularity, but principle.

I personally detest polygamy. Yet if we yield to our impulse and single out one hated minority, the First Amendment becomes little more than hype and we become little more than hypocrites. For my part, I would rather have a neighbor with different spouses than a country with different standards for its citizens.

I know I can educate my three sons about the importance of monogamy, but hypocrisy can leave a more lasting impression.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington Law School.

via USATODAY.com – Polygamy laws expose our own hypocrisy.

May 26, 2011
Istanbul family consultant suggests allowing polygamy

ISTANBUL – Hürriyet

'Rich men with solid careers and lots of sexual power can sometimes choose polygamy,' Üresin said.

A family consultant and life coach who conducts seminars on inter-family communication for Istanbul municipalities has suggested legalizing polygamy, citing both secular and religious arguments in support of her position.

“A man looks for friendship, sexuality, motherhood and good housekeeping qualities in a woman. Unless you possess these attributes, you ought to be ready for being cheated upon. This is a righteous search for a man,” said 35-year-old Sibel Üresin, who has worked for the largely conservative municipalities of Fatih, Ümraniye, Bahçelievler and Eyüp, among others. “A healthy woman who analyzes what she will have to go through in the case of a divorce should, in my opinion, consider polygamy as a form of salvation.”

Polygamy is already a fact of life because 85 percent of men already cheat anyway, according to Üresin. In conservative sections of Turkish society, this is referred to as an “imam-wed wife” and is called a mistress by other parts of society, Üresin said.

“Rich men with solid careers and lots of sexual power can sometimes choose polygamy. No woman would ever become the second wife of a poor man. Men go after women who are more flirtatious, laugh more and who can satisfy them sexually. If I were a man, I would have been polygamous,” said Üresin, arguing that legalizing polygamy would empower women who are already engaged in polygamous marriages.

Men can have up to four wives according to many interpretations of Islam, yet these wives have no legal rights in Turkey, according to Üresin, who added that legalizing polygamy would entitle such wives to their husband’s property.

“Polygamy exists in our religion. Not everyone can do it, but you cannot ask someone why they did it; that amounts to polytheism. It is written in the Quran,” Üresin said.

via Istanbul family consultant suggests allowing polygamy – Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review.

May 25, 2011