By Ben Holland
Huseyin Uzmez denies having sex with a 14-year-old girl. He just defends a man’s right to marry one.
Uzmez, 76, a columnist at Turkey’s Islamist Vakit newspaper, is pleading not guilty to charges of sexually abusing a minor in a case that has gripped the country of 70 million. Since his release on bail on Oct. 28, Uzmez has publicly defended Islamic rules that permit girls to wed below the legal age of 16.
“A girl who’s reached puberty, who’s having periods, is of age, according to our beliefs,” Uzmez told national television the day he got out. “And if she’s of age, she can marry.”
Uzmez returns to court on Dec. 16. Whatever the eventual outcome, the case has widened the gulf between Turks promoting Islamic law and those who support the secular system put in place by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in the 1920s. The state religious authority, which employs imams at Turkey’s 80,000 mosques, opposes child marriage, though the practice remains rife.
Thirty-nine percent of married women in the southern province of Sanliurfa were 16 or younger on their wedding day, according to the Istanbul-based Social Democracy Foundation, which is campaigning against the practice. Read more ...
Huseyin Uzmez denies having sex with a 14-year-old girl. He just defends a man’s right to marry one.
Uzmez, 76, a columnist at Turkey’s Islamist Vakit newspaper, is pleading not guilty to charges of sexually abusing a minor in a case that has gripped the country of 70 million. Since his release on bail on Oct. 28, Uzmez has publicly defended Islamic rules that permit girls to wed below the legal age of 16.
“A girl who’s reached puberty, who’s having periods, is of age, according to our beliefs,” Uzmez told national television the day he got out. “And if she’s of age, she can marry.”
Uzmez returns to court on Dec. 16. Whatever the eventual outcome, the case has widened the gulf between Turks promoting Islamic law and those who support the secular system put in place by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in the 1920s. The state religious authority, which employs imams at Turkey’s 80,000 mosques, opposes child marriage, though the practice remains rife.
Thirty-nine percent of married women in the southern province of Sanliurfa were 16 or younger on their wedding day, according to the Istanbul-based Social Democracy Foundation, which is campaigning against the practice. Read more ...
Source: Bloomberg
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