POLYGAMY ABOLISHED.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 301, 20 December 1926, Page 13

POLYGAMY ABOLISHED.

XUKKEY'S NEW ORDER. : | EQUAL STATUS UJfDER MARRIAGE | LAW. ; | i i (From Our Special Correspondent.) ; 1 LONDON, October 30. j | Polygamy and harems have been the 11 accepted privilege of the Turk for nearly j | a thousand years; now bigamy is a : | crime in the land of the Crescent. All Turk, no matter how wealthy,-, may 11 Lave only one wife, and he can not 1 divorce her by simply telling her.to go :| back to her mother. < I The most startling and sweeping : 1 change ever made in the established laws | of a country has just been made in . = Turkey. I The Turkish National Assembly has 1 adopted the Swiss civil, code, supplant- I ing the old Mohammedan religious laws § which have governed family life and per- 1 sonal status since the chronicling of I Turkish history. I Not only has Turkey cast aside her I ancient customs and "Westernised" | herself, practically at one fell swoop, 1 but the country has resounded to the ; | modern march of femininity. A few years ' | ago Turkey was, as she had been | throughout the centuries, a land where ] | a man was a woman's lord and master. | in the true meanings of the words. A, | wife could be repudiated at will, and ! exchanged or bartered. J Women Have Equal Rights With Men. To-day the Turkish girl enjoys equal rights with a man in the obligations of matrimony. She must be wooed and won in the accepted sense. The new laws came into force at midnight on October 4,' and until the stroke of 12 a Turk could divorce his old wives and marry four new ones—four was the | legal number. The result was that the change caused a tremendous rush on the part of those who wished to enjoy to the | full the last day of multiple marriages I and easy divorce. In Constantinople i there were 300 demands for marriages 1 under the old system. Scores of wealthy | husbands divorced their wives in the old I time-honoured. way and then rushed to 1 the "registrars" with two, three and | four new ones. ' | In a large number of instances, how- I ever, the Turks who tried to drag young girls to the altar under the old polygamous laws, were faced with a new and hitherto unprecedented 'difficulty. The girls simply would not obey.' j By hook or by crook many of them; managed, to. preserve their independence I until, midnight, when they were able to f'snap their '■fingerS'- } -at,r~heir would-be husbands and rejoice .in a legalised freedom. "One effect of the present law is to raise the marriage age of- girls-.from 14 i to 18 years. I New System Against Law of Prophet. A journlist, writing from Constantinople, says that one All .Hassan told him all about the mighty change that! had fallen over the land.a_-he-sorrow-, i fully sipped black coffee and" miised-on | women and life. "Evil days have fallen; ■upon us," said Alt, "_»' can't see any; good in this new notion. It is against j the law of the prophet. Mohammed said j if a man couldn't get along wita pne j wife he could marry three more. ' "' 11 i believe it was a good system, although '! many people think.it had something to do with all the wars Turkey has been in for the last 600 years. The Turkish army always reported that the men living with four wives were always the first t< enlist for service at the front, an'" seemed more at home in battle than their unmarried brothers. The Koranic law gave him the means of ridding him self of undesirable wives whenever and as often, as he pleased. All he had to'do was to drop three* stones in front i of his wife, and repeat three times, 'You are no wife of mine,' and that I finished it." * .. Ali added that the men would take to tha new law about as readily as they would take to bubonic plague.