I researched alimony debates that have become a hot topic since 2016 in Turkey from a sociological perspective for more than two years. Among the more than thirty interviewees were divorce lawyers, members of women’s groups, feminist lawyers, rights defenders, and academics in law. However, the study focused on men and women active in groups calling for a time limitation on alimony as well as divorced women who could or could not receive alimony and/or child support from their ex-spouses. Based on the stories of the men and women who shared their time with me, and the limited number of studies on poverty alimony both in Turkey and in other countries, I will discuss the issue of alimony, which has been on the agenda again recently, from several vital perspectives in this article.
This is the first piece in a two-part series. There are three issues I would like to emphasize in particular: The relationship between alimony and patriarchal control over women’s bodies and gendered division of labour in the household; what does “family” mean for the government, men and women and what does their approach to the family institution tell us in alimony debates; and finally, why is the “state-supported alimony model” not reliable?
Why is Alimony a Matter of Poverty?
During our interview, a feminist lawyer stated: “When you address alimony just as alimony, it is like the description of an elephant by a blind person. Alimony is only a part of the whole problem of patriarchy.” In other words, alimony is much more than a sum of money paid by one party to the other after a divorce. Article 175 of the Civil Code does not say, “The man pays alimony to the woman”, it says “The party who falls into poverty is entitled to alimony”. Women are entitled to alimony not just because they are women, but because they are overwhelmingly the party who falls into poverty after divorce. But women fall into poverty precisely because of their gender. Alimony is a consequence of the inequality between men and women that begins at birth, reproduced by the traditional family model, sexist employment and welfare policies, and fueled by neoliberalism and the rising neoconservatism. In today’s heated debates on the issue of alimony, the two most fundamental things that form the core of the issue, but which we never hear about, are the women’s bodies and their invisible domestic labour. In the traditional family model, according to the marriage contract between a man and a woman, the woman keeps the house in order and takes care of the household, while the man, the “head of the family”, brings home the money. Society places the responsibility of keeping the family together at all costs on the woman’s shoulders. In other words, even if a woman is constantly subjected to physical, sexual, economic and psychological violence, when she wants to leave, the first action of the family and the environment is to try to convince her not to “break up her family”. The issue of mediation in divorces means that the tradition, which has existed in society since time immemorial, of “families coming together to convince the woman not to break up” when a couple wants to separate (mostly the woman decides to get divorced because it is the woman who suffers the damage of the marriage), is being carried out by the state.
None of the divorced women in my interviews thought of remarrying as long as they were working and earning their own money and as long as they did not feel truly loved. As for divorced men, all of them, without exception, wanted to remarry, claiming that poverty alimony, property division and compensation prevented this. So, why are men so eager to marry for the second or third time while women are so reluctant? This is a question that almost every woman knows the answer to. Being the “head of the family” gives a man a privileged position in society. He can earn a higher salary, find a job more easily, is seen as more reliable, and is easier for him to be promoted. Moreover, the woman serves him at home, washes and irons his clothes, feeds him and ensures the continuity of his lineage. We can say that marriage carries “negativity” for a man only during divorce and that the principle of equality, which was introduced into the Civil Code in 2002 with the tremendous efforts of the women’s movement, played a significant role in this, which is why today the Civil Code as a whole is the target of attacks.
Another party that benefits from this family model is, of course, the state; the family model in which the woman (even if she works outside the home) continues to care for and serve the man and children at home, and cannot leave even in the face of violence, saves the state a lot of costs. Social welfare is placed on the shoulders of the family, i.e. women; for example, caring for the elderly, children and disabled becomes the duty of the family, i.e. women. The traditional family has a special significance for the AKP government, which has emphasised women’s primary role as “mother, wife, caregiver” since the day it came to power, and constantly condemned women who work, do not have children, do not marry or do divorce. As a result of the neoliberal policies pursued since the 80s, the state has gradually withdrawn from many welfare services, a process that accelerated during the AKP period. Free daycares for children and the elderly were closed down, and many other welfare services were eroded by neoliberalism. In order to legitimize its own existence, the state has become constantly spoken out on issues such as nationalism, religion, culture and tradition.
The family is a useful tool for the AKP, which is precisely why it has adopted the discourse of “strong family, strong state” since the day it came to power. In the systematic attack on women’s vested rights since 2016, we have witnessed the AKP’s dirty collaboration with men who see full male domination as their right. We are witnessing a masculine restoration, some of the concrete steps that follow the political discourse that has been promoting male domination over women from the very beginning and that sees equality between men and women as “contrary to nature”. The AKP, which claims to value the opinions of the people, does not act according to the wishes of the majority, but according to the demands of groups, mostly men, who are against women’s rights and equality. If it had listened to the will of the people, it would not have withdrawn from the Istanbul Convention. According to Metropoll’s survey, 52.3 per cent of the public was against withdrawal from the Convention, while only 26.7 per cent were in favor of withdrawal. While pre-2016 parliamentary surveys identified the biggest problem with alimony as low alimony amounts and non-payment of alimony, no research has been conducted on this issue since the alimony debate started in 2016. If there was no data before 2016, neither the Ministry of Justice nor the Ministry of Family and Social Services took any steps to collect data after 2016.
What Does Data Collected by Women but Not by the State Show Us?
According to the Women’s Solidarity Foundation’s research on alimony cases in 2019, 66.4 per cent of the alimony awarded is between 0-500 TL. The average alimony amount is 370 TL. Only 20.7 per cent of these alimonies are paid. The small-scale research I conducted also supports this data. 65 per cent of the alimony awarded is between 0-500 TL, with an average of 230 TL. Except for one uncontested divorce, there was no alimony over 250 TL. One out of 10 women I spoke to was awarded 150 TL poverty alimony. Six of the nine women had a job at the time of divorce, and only four of them had a salary above the minimum wage. All of the women, eight of whom were divorced with 1 child and two of whom were divorced with 2 children, were granted custody, and only 4 of them were awarded maintenance for participation. The average amount of maintenance ordered by the court was 200 TL. None of the women was able to collect the maintenance. While individual studies, ranging from small-scale to large-scale studies such as those of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, show that the main problem with alimony is the low amount of alimony and the inability to collect it, the AKP’s decision to limit the duration of alimony for poverty and to make unreasonable calculations on the amount is a step that serves the minority and its own interests, just like its decision to abolish the Istanbul Convention, which provides a detailed map of policies and methods for gender equality while gender inequality leads to violence, femicides, impoverishment and oppression of women.
The Civil Code is Gender-Neutral. Then, Why is Alimony a “Woman’s Right” in Real Life?
What was the situation of women under the roof of marriage? The marriage stories of the women I interviewed were separate stories of violence. The main thing that led a significant number of them to decide to divorce was that the violence had become intolerable. The majority of the women received death threats after they announced their decision to divorce, and some of them were subjected to violence because of their decision to divorce. The common sentence I heard from almost every woman was “I just wanted a divorce and nothing else”. Therefore, women did not demand alimony, even if they had never worked, either because they were threatened or because they wanted to get divorced as soon as possible, or they were already working during the divorce process. Psychological, sexual and economic violence was dominant among highly educated women. An academic woman explained why she was not subjected to physical violence as follows: “Because physical violence leaves scars. We both existed in an educated environment, so he would resort to forms of violence that did not leave marks on my body.” Throughout their marriage, the two women’s paycards were confiscated by their husbands, and they had no control over how they spent the money they earned. Without exception, all of the women, most of whom had found employment after divorce, had experienced severe physical violence, and many felt compelled to stay in the marriage because of the lack of support from their families and, most importantly, for the sake of their children. Most of these women had never worked in their lives until their divorce, but only one of them was granted 150 TL poverty alimony. The working lives of working women were interrupted due to the burden of domestic labour and childcare. In other words, these women could have been at a much more advanced point in their working lives if they had never married. Moreover, they benefited from services such as paid daycare centers. The biggest problem for women who started working after the divorce was childcare. Most of the women received support from their families or neighbours.
This is precisely where the logic of alimony lies: While a man can benefit from the blessings of marriage and increase his dignity in society, a woman, even if she is working, cannot advance in her working life because she always spends more time on domestic labour and care, and if she is not working, she cannot leave the marriage because the man is in complete control of the money, she has no economic freedom even if she is subjected to violence, and she cannot get support from her family and society. Just because of this inequality, alimony is a “woman’s right” today, even though it is gender-neutral in the law. On top of that, in most cases, the custody of the child is given to the woman, even if she is unemployed (most of the women I interviewed preferred this), so this poverty is not only the poverty of the woman but also the poverty of the child. By the way, let me mention this: In many cases, we see more frequently that alimony no longer refers only to the poverty alimony paid to the impoverished spouse (mostly the woman under Turkish conditions), but also to the maintenance paid to the couple’s joint children. Due to the social shame of refraining from paying an amount that would not even cover one-thousandth of the expenses of one’s child, it is often demanded under the guise of “joint custody”. A female interviewee explained the fact that most men do not see themselves as a partner in the expenses of their children as follows: “When a man divorces his wife, he also divorces his child.” In other words, the child who is not under the roof of the man does not deserve financial support, which is the only form of support he can provide. In everyday life, joint custody means that the woman continues to take care of the child, but the man has a say in every decision regarding the child, and the man can only share in the child’s expenses if he is willing. There are certainly fathers who are equally interested in the care of their children and who care about the welfare of their children, but we know very well that their proportion in the population is very low and we can see this in the data. According to the Mother Child Education Foundation AÇEV’s 2017 study on fatherhood in Turkey, 91 per cent of fathers said that mothers should take care of children between the ages of 0-10. On average, fathers spend 9 hours and 20 minutes at work, 2 hours and 20 minutes with their children and 1 hour and 20 minutes with their friends on a typical working day. In the alimony debates, we should keep in mind that the issue is not only alimony, but also child support.
In the next piece, I will address women’s realities and experiences of alimony, the fact that the anger of the patriarchal reaction is not limited to the right to alimony, and the state-supported alimony model.
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