By A. Humeyra Atilgan
ISTANBUL
As Turkey gets ready for one of its major religious holidays, one newlywed couple are facing a daunting visit home.
Saturday sees the Muslim Feast of Sacrifice, also called Eid al-Adha, a time when thousands of Turks traditionally travel to spend time with their families in their home regions.
For 28-year-old Serkan and his new wife, the first holiday visit to the bride’s family promises to be an awkward affair – as the pair eloped nearly a month ago.
Getting married without parental consent is a significant social issue right across Turkey which, in many ways, remains a strongly family orientated society.
Caring for elderly parents, living with an extended family and the proliferation of family owned businesses all point to Turkey’s embracing of traditional values.
However, true love threw up some dilemas for this young couple. Serkan and his 20-year-old wife met three months ago at the wedding of a mutual friend and fell head over heels in love.
On September 4 they decided to elope and one day later were officially married.
Now, it is not clear yet if the bride's family will welcome the couple on the first day of the holy festival or send them away, Serkan tells the Anadolu Agency.
Family visits after getting married are an accepted way of showing the couple's sense of familial loyalty.
Journalist and author Cihan Aktas claims eloping happens when young people cannot find the love and affection they need inside the family and look for more outside the home.
"A girl or woman who is thinking of eloping has probably believed in a sweet-talking man who has offered her a happier family than she has now," Aktas says.
Eloping is a long-existing tradition in Turkey, which is sometimes accompanied by families – wishing to avoid costly wedding expenses – turning a blind eye.
An average wedding can cost 20,000 - 30,000 Turkish liras ($8,700 - $13,000) – an amount 25-35 times more than the monthly minimum wage in Turkey.
In such cases, eloping really means "not having the means of paying for a wedding ceremony and reception," Aktas tells AA.
However, this was not the case for Serkan and his wife who ran off as they did not want "to waste time convincing her family about the marriage."
"Ours was love at first sight; now we are already married and the families have to accept it," says Serkan, as bride agrees, laughing.
The couple had their wedding ceremony three weeks ago in Turkey's western province of Isparta with the help of the groom's family who, luckily, approved the match from the very beginning.
Eloping, perhaps unsurprisingly, does not always have a happy ending. Just two months ago in the Kagithane district of Istanbul, two people – including the groom – died and four others were wounded in a fight between the couple's families.
An eyewitness said that the violence broke out when the girl's brothers wanted to get her back as the couple was in a photo studio to have their wedding pictures taken.
In a more recent story, three men broke into a girl's house in the Tavsantepe area of Izmit province to force her to elope; a fracas broke out and the girl’s father was stabbed before shooting the intruders.
"If eloping is done by way of violence, by forcing the bride or the groom, it turns into a crime of ‘restricting the freedom of a person’, says Riza Kisar, a lawyer of the Istanbul Bar Association, tells AA.
Kisar adds: "If a person uses physical power or threat or deception to perform an act or during commission of offence, then he is sentenced to imprisonment from two years to seven years."
However, there is no punishment for a man who convinces a woman to elope promising her the earth before saying good-bye because he "regretted his decision to marry her", as was the case for one 20-year-old Istanbulite called Nuray.
"I was quite happy in my family. I had everything I wanted but one day I found love and I was dying to marry him," Nuray told AA.
She had an older sister getting ready for marriage and her family wanted Nuray to wait until her sibling tied the knot.
"It was not clear when my sister would be totally ready for marriage and I did not want to wait for something which was uncertain," says Nuray.
"This is why I decided to elope.
Now, I deeply regret that I eloped; he let me down when he called me at 3 a.m. one night saying he wanted to get divorced after our six-month marriage," she recalls.
When families are planning for a ‘perfect’ dowry and wedding, couples may feel daunted about the process of getting married and choose an easier way of being together, says journalist Aktas.
Suggesting the government support couples who are having financial difficulties in getting married, Aktas said it was significant that both families and young people should be educated to change their beliefs in “perfect marriages.”
However, it is too late for Nuray who says: "I cannot trust anyone anymore; I cannot get married again." She strongly advises young men and women not to marry someone without the consent of their families.
www.aa.com.tr/en
