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Marriage, occurs between persons who is under the age of 18 is called earlymarriage. It is also seen as a forced marriage, because a person as a child can notdecide what is good to her or his before the age of 18. Even if he or she wants tomarry under the age of 18, because of being developmental age, his or her willshould be ignored.According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child which was adopted in theGeneral Assembly of the UN in 1989 and ratified by 191 countries, including alsoTurkey, individuals under the age of 18 are considered as children. That is why earlymarriage problem is also called “child bride”. Therefore, conceptions such as “childmother”, mother children” “early marriage”, “preterm birth” are concepts that haveplace also in international law.A few factors come out when why the early marriages do not enjoy legal legitimacyin most countries and are seen as a problem is questioned. Early marriages cause theemergence of unhealthy and young mothers by affecting the physical and mentaldevelopment of particularly the girls and cause them to find themselves insidecomplicated roles while they are yet in adolescence period. The educations of theadolescent children who are materially and morally dependant are cut by themarriage of these children and they cannot also benefit enough from the employmentopportunities since they have not been able to become qualified. Early marriagesresult mainly against the women. The woman who is not able to participate in thelabor force and who has been deprived of education becomes obliged to live her lifedepending upon her husband. UN defines early marriage as a modern version ofslavery and early marriage is evaluated under the head of human trafficking.Turkey has also made regulations regarding the child in compliance with theinternational legislation yet has applied a different practice in the marriage issue.Despite the consideration of the ages below 18 as a child according to Turkish CivilCode, marriage age is 17 but under the exceptional circumstances, judges can let tomarriage at the age of 16. Turkish legislation try to protect child rights on the onehand, on the other hand, they (Turkish legislation) let to marriage at the age of 16.According to the Criminal Code, the crime committed against an individual who isunder the age of 15 is considered as “child molestation”. As also seen here, there is2

no uniformity in the legislation about the age until which the individual will beconsidered as child. In addition to this, the punishment of the spouses of those whohad turned 15 and been married off unofficially was conditioned to the plaint of thevictim. When it is considered that a girl who had been married off by imam marriageand is at the age of 15 would not easily be plaintiff against her husband, it is possibleto state that the early marriage is nearly encouraged.In addition to the practices carried out by a few non-governmental organizations onthe issue of early marriage, mostly the official authorities have worked on thesubject. Some of the institutions that carry out researches on this issue areParliamentary Sub-Commission for the Investigation of Early Marriage, GeneralDirectorate of Family and Social Research the Human Rıghts Presıdency (of thePrime Ministry), Social Services and Child Protection Agency.The families’ not thinking that the early marriage is early has been stated as aground for the early marriage that in the study carried out by theHuman RightsCommittee of the Prime Ministry of Turkey. It is clear here in that seeing earlymarriage as a problem requires some precondition. First of all it is necessary to seechildhood as a distinct category. Childhood is a modern category which is firstconceptualized at 18th century, before that child is only seen as a miniature versionof adult. Because of the absence of lower limit for working, in traditional societiesthere is no need to delay adulthood.Appearance of the modern childhood concept is much related to nation-states andmodernization. Nation states require the compulsory education in order to continueit self by creating citizens. In addition to that family is very important for modernchildhood concept. Family is responsible for transmitting present values religion,education, and property rights and for meeting his/her biological and psychologicalneeds. According to modern childhood concept, childhood is a special categorywhich has different needs from adults and must be protected from the world outside,they are seen a category which need to special education and nutrition. (Aries: 1962,Postman: 1995, Heywood: 2003)3

Talking about drawbacks of early marriage means that we have a modernistapproach towards childhood. Deprivation from education, being more vulnerableagainst violence, being at risk in terms of health are seen the major adverseconsequences of early marriage according to reports which was mentioned above.Calling all these adverse effects of early marriage is a problem require modernchildhood concept. The early marriage is considered as inconveniency with theconceptualization of child which has been mentioned herein. Whereas the child is ofa category which shall be playing games, going to school, it is being thrown into themarriage, in which complicated power relations perpetrate. The right of the womanto be a child is being seized. This study, regarding the Convention on the Rights ofthe Child, is based upon the presumption that individuals under the age of eighteenare children and marrying of the children is inconvenient. Even we can asset thatsome government policies cause to become established the problem such as newsocial security system, new legislation prevents girls from get benefit from theirfather after the age of 18. It means that women should join to labor force or getmarried in order to include social security system. Interestingly enough, governmentdefends this legislation in the name of equality. However, participating to labor forceis not equal for women and men. Thus, most of the time there is one way forwomen. That is getting married. It is very difficult to prove but this legislation maycause the enhancing of early marriages; however government promotes marriage ina discursive level by inculcating to make three children in every opportunity.Day to day, being a working mother is getting difficult. Daycare centers, breastfeeding permission and this kind of rights are eliminated with the blind excuse ofequality. Government claims that these kinds of rights are obstacles for womenemployment. All these policies encourage women whose rights are taken from themto marry as a short way for survive. Thus, we can conclude that the marriage hasturned out to be a social security system.When we look at the indications from the world, it is seen that 36% of the women inthe age group of 20-24 are composed of those who had been married or began to livetogether under the age of 18.4

The highest number of early marriages in the world is found in Southern Asia andSub-Saharan Africa. Pregnancy and maternity at a very early age are an inevitableresult of child marriage. It is supposed that each year 14 million adolescents betweenthe ages of 15 and 19 give birth. 1The issue is not only interest Turkey and Asian country. At the same time, the unit isestablished in UK in order to struggle early marriage2. UK citizens whose origin isAsia and Africa are forced to marry with someone, who wants to get UK citizenship,especially when they visit their home country at summer holiday by their family.UK and other European countries take some precaution to hinder it. School’sadministration makes our pupil who comes from Asian countries sign a documentthat is a kind of declaration about marriage decision. They sign it if they don’t wantto marry with someone. After that if they don’t come back to school, administrationof school will pursue their sequel.The early marriage is considered in this study as a form of expropriation ofpatriarchy on the body, rights of her fertility and sexuality of the women.How and by which mechanisms the patriarchy institutionalizes the legitimatepaedophilia by normalising a situation which may be considered as child abuse viamale cooperation constitutes the principle question. How the early marriage, whichis an oppressive patriarchal custom, sustains itself is one of the questions of thestudy. What it is to be a child-bride regarding the own statements of the earlymarried women how the early-married women perceive themselves as being childbrides is another subject that is being emphasized. Additionally, the reasons andresults of the early marriage was sized up relying on their own experiences of life.There is no consensus on the definition of the concept of patriarchy which was usedin identifying the question of the research. Lacking a consensus on its definitionwould not pose an obstacle on the explicatory character of concept of .htm22009–07–02 Haber7, http://www.haber7.com5

As I will mention in more detail while giving a place to what has been written on thedefinition of the patriarchy in the following chapter, Bennet (2006) states that thepatriarchy exists anywhere and, however, takes various forms. While, in case ofearly marriage, the patriarchy – which was identified by Bennet familial-social,ideological, political system that actualize itself by mediation through education,customs – function as seizure of her rights on the body, sexuality, fertility of thewoman, in another place, another woman may go through the same process byexperiencing the norm to obtain and maintain the body sizes perceived as perfect asa heavy burden or by alienation to her own body by processes of medicalisedpregnancy and menopause.Hartmann’s (1981) emphasize on the solidarity between male on the rendering thepatriarchy effective in his definition of patriarchy is significant in respect of thisstudy. Solidarity between male is operational in respect of institutionalization of thepaedophilia, probability of early marriage. Father transfers his daughter to anotherman as a property. It is a kind of legal system that occurs among men. The pudicityof the woman is not a woman subject but an issue of a law between male. Thecommon name of all the sorrow becomes “destiny” and the consolation is “these arenormal things in home”. Whilst this study had been focused on the grounds and theconsequences, after the interviews I have had wit the women, I realized that it wasnot possible to separate the grounds and the consequences sharply from each other.If we need an instant, marrying off a girl in order to protect her from rape puts herright into an experience of rape which will last the whole life. Being married offwith the fear of rape constitutes the beginning of the rape. Another instant is that agirl may fall right into a helical of violence by consenting early marriage, who couldnot tolerate a second marriage of her father, that is bringing in a fellow wife uponher mother and who has become subject of a kind of sensual torture.However, it is also not possible to state that the early marriage does not havegrounds and consequences, yet only there are engagements for some cases.It also has to be noted that not all of the marriage experiences mentioned herein areof the early type. It is not possible to claim that women who have got married afterthe age of 18 have not experienced marital rape, pressure for giving birth to a male6

child, violence, exploitation of labor told by the women in the interviews I havemade in 4 neighborhoods within the city of Van with 19 early married women whohad married between the ages of 12 and 17. The claim of this study is that the childbrides go through these experiences more severely due to being a child. Moreover,we can also describe marriage experiences that are peculiar for child brides. An earlymarried girl has difficulties in explain the meaning her position. Which is to say,while she is expected to be a “bride”, to act like a “bride”, the child has difficultiesin comprehending this expectation of her surroundings and may have inconvenientactions due to lack of idea about what it means to do “bride” things, “to be a bride”and so may become subject to some sanctions. If be needed to refer a tragicomicinstant; situations such as the desire of the girl craving for her own family to sleepwith her mother-in-law at nights; her sitting on the lap of her father-in-law and evencalling her husband “older brother” for a long time may be the case.Would it not reflect without any need to a comment the tragedy of the early marriageto have tried to kiss the hand of the interviewee of mine who looked quite older thanme but as I have then learned was even one year younger, just as I had beenintroduced to?The own expressions of those who have experienced early marriage are taken intoconsideration. Thorough interviews in a way in compliance with the core of thefeminist methodology have been considered as a ground for experience sharing andan opportunity for mutual strengthening. The subject is approached via thepresupposition that the marriage which is claimed to be a form of violence wouldlead to more severe results when the children are in question.The early marriage shall be appraised not as a simple backwardness, economicrooted problem but as related to the secondary position of the woman.Therefore; it is necessary to explore and question early marriage from the feministperspectiveIssues like exploitation of women labor force, sexuality, motherhood and child carein early marriage will be evaluated in consideration of feminist theories. The7

necessity to benefit from also the writings on marriage and kinship beside thefeminist theories while dealing with early marriage. This is not a representativestudy. It is limited to one region. In this sense, it does not have a representative valuein terms of all early marriage practices. However, it aims to understand the issuethrough a group of women and explain reasons of early marriage.The city of Van, a city from Middle Eastern Anatolia region where adolescentpregnancy is most widely seen according to THDS 2008 data, is chosen as theresearch area. In terms of both surface area and population, Van is bigger from othercities of the region, namely Bingöl, Bitlis, Elazığ, Hakkari, Malatya, Muş andTunceli. While the early marriage may be considered as related to multiple pointssuch as a form of slavery, a human rights violation, a child rights violation, it cannotbe thought of independent of patriarchy.We can state that the early marriage is one of the appearances of patriarchy. If beneeded to quote the statements of Walby writing on the radical feminismMale sexuality is forced on women through rape prostitution, pornography andother cultural practices. . Women’s labor is expropriated in marriage, their fertilityis controlled, their creativeness is cramped with persecution and knowledge iswithheld from them. (Walby, 1992; p.121)Although this study mainly adopts a radical feminist perspective, it also benefitsfrom other feminist approaches that can explain reasons and re

v conducted on 19 women in Van province .In order to get diversity in Van, four districts were chosen. The scopes that women's marriage experiences are questioned