Women's Property Rights in Turkey

Abstract

This article takes Turkey as a case study, exploring marital and inheritance regimes with regard to their impact on women and their ability to protect women's property rights. The aim of the study is to bring to light the workings of the legal system that regulate the acquisition of property and to scrutinize the gap between the law and its practice in Turkish society. By taking this approach, the article does not only focus on laws but also on how these laws are adopted by society. Thus, two levels of analysis—de jure and de facto—are utilized for an investigation of women's property rights and hence their social and economic status.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK), especially the Research Group of Social Sciences (SOBAG) for the support provided to the research. Additionally, the authors would like to show gratitude for the contributions of Çiğdem Oğuz in the conduct of research.

Notes on contributors

Mary Lou O'Neil is an Associate Professor of Sociology and the director of the Gender and Women's Studies Research Center at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, Turkey. She has an MA in Women's Studies from the University of Exeter and completed her Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of Kansas. Her research interests focus on gender, women's studies and law in Turkey. She has published various articles in the European Journal of Women's Studies, Fashion Theory, Journal of International Women's Studies and Comparative America Studies.

Sule Toktas is a political scientist at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey. She has PhD degree in Political Science from Bilkent University and an M.Sc. in Gender and Women's Studies from the Middle East Technical University. Dr Toktas's research interests include women's studies, Turkish politics, ethnicity and international migration. Her publications appeared in various journals, i.e. International Migration, Middle East Policy, Political Science Quarterly, Violence Against Women (VAW), Women's History Review, Minerva and the Muslim World. She co-authored three books on documentation of immigration in Turkey and foreign policy-making in Turkey and the Middle East.

Notes

1. Doss et al., “Gender and Asset Ownership”; Antonopoulos and Floro, “Asset Ownership along Gender Lines.”

2. Agarwal, “Bargaining and Gender Relations.”

3. Mukhopadhyay, “Introduction: Women and Property.”

4. Agarwal, “Disinherited Peasants, Disadvantaged Workers,” 2–14; Agnes Quisumbing and Maluccio, “Intrahousehold Allocation and Gender Relations.”

5. Datta, “Joint Titling – A Win-Win Policy?”

6. Bhatla et al., “Property Ownership and Inheritance Rights.”

7. Deere and Doss, “The Gender Asset Gap,” 7, 12, 26.

8. Deere and Leon, “The Gender Asset Gap: Land in Latin America.”

9. Deer and Doss, “The Gender Asset Gap,” 30.

10. This article is part of a broader research project funded by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (Tübitak). The authors would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Group (SOBAG) at Tübitak for generous support granted to the research.

11. Amnesty International, “Women Confronting Domestic Violence,” 9.

12. Yıldırım, “Aftermath of a Revolution,” 349, 359, 360.

13. Miller, “The Ottoman and Islamic Substratum of Turkey's Swiss Civil Code,” 336, 337.

14. Özsu, “Receiving the Swiss Civil Code,” 72.

15. Yarar, “Bir Moral Düzenleme Biçimi Olarak Medeni Kanunun Aile Hukukunun Arkeolojisi.”

16. Yıldırım, “Aftermath of a Revolution,” 366.

17. CEDAW affects women's property rights because it recommends the protection of equal rights of women and expects signature countries to adopt norms of CEDAW in their civil law and family law. Although the new Civil Law represents a decided improvement for women, women's groups as well as the monitoring Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women have long called for the current law, which provides for a partial community property state, to be retroactive thus further elimination discrimination against women who were married before the law went into effect. The current Civil Law only applies to those who married after 2002 when the law went into force. See Arat, “Women's Rights and Islam in Turkish Politics.”

18. Benschop, Rights and Reality.

19. Benschop, “Women's Rights to Land and Property,” 2.

20. T. C. Başbakanlık Kadının Statüsü Genel Müdürlüğü, Türkiye'de Kadının Durumu.

21. T. C. Başbakanlık Türkiye İstatistik Kurumu, Aile Yapısı Araştırması.

22. T. C. Başbakanlık Kadının Statüsü Genel Müdürlüğü, Türkiye'de Kadına Yönelik Aile İçi Şiddet.

23. Yılmaz, “Non-Recognition of Post-Modern Turkish,” 27.

24. Hacettepe Üniversitesi Nüfus Etütleri Enstitüsü, Türkiye Nüfus ve Sağlık Araştırması 2008, 8.

25. Esposito and DeLong-Bas, Women in Muslim Family Law.

26. Fay, “From Concubines to Capitalists.”

27. Olmstead, “Gender, Aging and the Evolving Arab Patriarchal Contract,” 56.

28. Western, “Islamic Purse Strings.”

29. Moors, Women, Property, and Islam, 127.

30. Olmstead, “Gender, Aging and the Evolving Arab Patriarchal Contract,” 56.

31. According to the national survey conducted by Hacettepe University in 2008, 95 percent of women are married and only 2 percent of women are widows and 3 percent are divorced/separated women. Hacettepe Üniversitesi Nüfus Etütleri Enstitüsü, 68.

32. Deere and Doss, “Gender and the Distribution of Wealth in Developing Countries.”

33. McCreery, “Women's Property Rights and Dowry in China and South Asia,” 163.

34. Abou-Habib, “Family Law and Gender Discrimination,” 143.

35. Smith, “Women in Islam.”

36. Karadağ, “Formations of Gender in a Turkish Context,” 77, 78, 79.

37. Uzun and Çolak, The Issues of Women's Property Acquisition in Turkey.

38. Starr, “The Role of Turkish Secular Law in Changing the Lives of Rural Muslim Women, 1950–1970”.

39. International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights-IHF, Women 2000.

40. Yılmaz, Muslim Laws, Politics and Society Nation States.

41. Chiweza, “Women's Inheritance Rights in Malawi,” 84; Deere and Leon, “A Disjuncture in Law and Practice.”

42. Deere et al., Poverty, Headship and Gender Inequality in Asset Ownership in Latin America.

43. Deere and Doss, “The Gender Asset Gap,” 4.

44. Cotula, “Gender and Law.”

45. Deere and Leon, “The Gender Asset Gap,” 933.

46. Ikdahl et al., “Human Rights, Formalization and Women's Land Rights,” 1.

47. Warren, “Moving Beyond the Gender Wealth Gap,” 197.

48. Varley, “Gender and Property Formalization,” 1748.