FETHIYE, Turkey - A recent poll in a
Turkish newspaper included an eye-catching
statistic. A substantial majority of the
population, 63%, thought it perfectly acceptable
for a man to have more than one wife. Although
polygamy itself is relatively scarce in the modern
population, it still exists, primarily in the
ethnically Kurdish section of the population and
among some older Turkish couples.
My
neighbors at the first house I occupied on moving
here were
polygamous; Ali Osman Kaya
was living with Hadiye and Bedriye and had been
since 1956. Their story was moving, but I am sure
not unique.
Ali Osman Kaya, now 82, was
born in the year that Turkey became a republic and
two years before founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
outlawed multiple marriages. A good citizen of the
new country, he completed his military service on
the Greek border during World War II and returned
honorably to his village ready to marry his
sweetheart Hadiye. He was 24, she was 22, and she
had waited for his homecoming for four years. Ali
Osman sold most of the flocks he had been given by
his father and together they moved from Ekincik to
the village of Candir, where he bought a piece of
overgrown uncultivated land.
The young
couple set about the backbreaking work of clearing
the land, uprooting scrubs and trees, using
donkeys to till the earth and planting the citrus
and olive trees that were to ensure their economic
survival. Hadiye tended to the sheep and goats
with a passion; livestock are still among her
greatest pleasures today when, at the age of 80,
she is still herds their small flock up and down
the mountain.
The farm prospered. They got
chickens, ducks, a few cows, and a couple of dogs,
and Ali Osman rode a horse when he had to travel
to and from the village. Their home was not
luxurious, but it was comfortable and they had won
the friendship and admiration of their fellow
villagers with their hard work and cheerful
manners. The only thing that was missing was a
child. No matter how often they tried, despite the
endless folk remedies suggested to Hadiye, she
never fell pregnant.
They appealed to Ali
Osman's brother to give him one of his sons to
rear as their own but he refused. For 15 years
they stayed together in their childless marriage
until at the age of 37 Hadiye accepted that she
was now too old ever to have children. Unable to
deny Ali Osman the sons he coveted, she suggested
that he divorce her and take another wife. She
said goodbye to the farm and moved alone to a
smaller house in the village. Ali Osman married
again and the marriage swiftly failed. He divorced
Wife Two and took 16-year-old Bedriye as his third
wife. Within months she was settled in on the farm
and was pregnant with their first child.
When the baby girl was born, everyone was
overjoyed except Bedriye. She was unable to shrug
off a nagging sense of guilt she had had since
moving in with Ali Osman. With a child
successfully delivered, she was now secure as his
wife and able to make an audacious move that no
one expected of a 17-year-old girl with a new
baby. Bedriye went into the village and found
39-year-old Hadiye in her pitiful small house and
confessed to her the feelings she had kept bottled
up inside.
Hadiye listened in disbelief as
the teenager explained that she felt it was not
fair that after 15 years working on the farm and
being wife to Ali Osman that Hadiye should be
living alone in straitened circumstances. She
almost dropped her knitting when Bedriye asked her
to return and live with her and Ali Osman.
Bedriye's only proviso was that there was to be no
jealousy but peaceful family relations, and to
this day Bedriye respectfully calls Hadiye
aba, the word used to indicate respect for
an older sister or female relative.
To my
knowledge the situation among the three of them
has always been calm. Bedriye went on to have four
more children, two girls and two boys, and all
five children refer to both women as "mom". They
shared the chores and field work between them:
Bedriye tended to the home, washing and cooking
and looking after guests, and Hadiye looked after
the animals, shearing them, milking them and
herding them.
Bedriye had her own bedroom;
always a light sleeper, she was unable to tolerate
Ali Osman's snoring every night. Hadiye and Ali
Osman shared a room but not a bed. In the winter
the three of them often share the heat of one room
together. They are living proof that women can
share a marriage and that polygamy is not always
the male-dominated enterprise it is made out to
be.
Polygamy is thus encouraged in certain
situations where there is a problem within an
existing marriage. The problem must be perceived
to be legitimate, such as if the first wife isn't
able to provide children. She may not necessarily
want to be divorced from her husband, and she
would like to remain part of a family. In cases
like these, first wives may actually encourage
their husbands to get married again and find a
wife for him who she thinks would be suitable. The
first wife has an important say in the matter as
she is considered to understand the husband best
and know his personality, and she also chooses
somebody she feels personally she will get along
with.
The second wife has the children but
both wives take turns looking after them.
In the United Kingdom's Muslim community,
arrangements such as these exist and allow second
wives to maintain a career or a profession, and
the arrangement can work out very nicely if it has
been carefully discussed and structured.
Proponents of polygamy point to other
pluses of the system. They argue that it
recognizes the different biological drives of men
and women. Women are genetically predispositioned
to seek a stable environment with a strong
provider to ensure the best chance of survival for
their children. For men, the best chance to ensure
the survival of their genetic material is to
inseminate as many women as possible.
Many
intellectuals and feminists have put forward the
hypothesis that human beings are more than their
biological urges, but to subscribe completely to
such theories is to ignore the evidence that as
many as 30-40% of men worldwide exhibit polygamous
behavior through extramarital affairs and that
women engage in consanguineous marriages in the
search for better partners.
Islam didn't
invent polygamy. It is a fairly universal
institution that was known in many ancient
religions, including Judaism, Christianity and
Hinduism. Polygamy is still practiced today in
West Africa, throughout the Middle East and by
some fundamentalist Mormons in the US (though it
is officially banned there). It was present in
Arabia before the Koran was revealed to Mohammed,
but the Koran regulated the extent and nature of
polygamy with strict guidelines that all wives
have to be treated absolutely equally.
In
the Kurdish areas of Turkey it is estimated that
between 10% and 25% of relationships are
polygamous and about 58% of the women in
polygamous marriages live together in one house
with the other wife/wives. While these
relationships are not always stress-free and many
women complain about serious problems with the
other wives, it is also true that in more than 50%
of such marriages the women either arranged the
second marriage themselves or entered the
arrangement of their own will.
Angry
Harry's website (www.angryharry.com - not a
serious study and openly misogynist) unwittingly
but accurately lists some of the pros for women of
polygamy. Harry says: "Think of all the time that
this polygamy idea would save for each of
the wives. Instead of doing three chores each,
they would each only have to do just one! ... The
vacuuming, the dusting and the window cleaning
could all be divided equally into three
separate parts ... and isn't this what women
actually say that they want ... equality, and a
reduction in the housework?" Certainly in the
labor-intensive agricultural societies of
southeastern Turkey, this must hold some appeal.
Problem pages all over the world regularly
feature letters from "sex-starved" husbands and
badgered wives. Sexual research done in Europe
suggests that a woman's sex drive kicks in every
10 days and a man's at least every five days,
leading to the disparity in expectations. Again
polygamy provides a practical solution.
Not every aspect of polygamy is about
practicality or men demonstrating their status,
though. Some of the marriages serve political
purposes whereby to avert a skirmish or a feud
with another tribe or group, a key male marries
into that tribe or group.
Cupid also has a
role. Remzi Oto, a sociologist at Dicle University
in Diyarbakir, conducted a study of 50 polygamous
men and showed that nearly a third took a second
wife after "falling in love". Most were forced
into marriage in their early teens or promised to
a family while still children. For these men,
"Choosing their own wife is a form of
self-assertion, a way of exploring their manhood
and of experiencing true love," said Oto.
Resat Yagdi, a Kurdish electrician and
onion farmer, has a wife and three children and is
preparing to take his second wife. The process
will enhance his status in the area where he lives
but is not easy or cheap. He must build his second
wife her own house and pay her bride price and
wedding costs. He thinks the total cost will be
high but believes it's worth it. His first
marriage is an unhappy one and he says, "Ayse is
so feminine. She is everything I've ever dreamed
of. She's my perfect type."
What his first
wife thinks of his "perfect" new wife is not
mentioned, and though there can undoubtedly be
benefits to women as a result of polygamy, there
is a darker side too that is often the reality for
many women. Loyal wives are pensioned off into an
artificial state of early menopause as they are
replaced in their husband's affections by younger
models.
Next: Where polygamy
fails the family
Fazile
Zahir is of Turkish descent, born and brought
up in London. She moved to live in Turkey in 2005
and has been writing full-time since then.
