Civil Code Change In Family Name For Children Out of Wedlock
This post has been updated, including the body of the text.
The Constitutional Court has amended the Turkish civil code to no longer automatically give children of parents who are not married the maother’s last name. Let me give you some background. Until recently, the space on the identity card for father’s name was crucial for everything — school registration, getting a passport, etc. All this needed the father’s permission. Children born out of wedlock or to couples married only with religious, not civil rites, had no legal identity. This changed on November 22, 2001, when Turkey adopted a new Civil Code that had been shaped by years of hard work by women’s rights activists. In the new Civil Code, spouses became equal partners with equal decision-making power over their children and over property acquired during marriage. The concept of “illegitimate” child was removed and custody granted to mothers of any child born out of wedlock. This meant that mothers had legal responsibility for their children and the children had a legal identity.
Changes to the Civil Code published in the Official Gazette this week eliminates the 2001 wording from “If a child’s mother and father aren’t married, the child will take the mother’s last name“, leaving the rule for assigning a last name to children born out of wedlock up in the air. If the change in name assignment goes along with a change in status, then the implications of this change would be enormous for the rights of women and children. The news article (click here, in Turkish) doesn’t examine the repercussions. The main question is whether this change in wording goes along with other changes that would place legal responsibility for the child in the father’s and takes it out of the mother’s hands. I am also curious about why this change from the widely lauded 2001 Civil Code has occurred.
I can imagine all kinds of scenarios in which a woman gives birth out of wedlock (not least of which is rape) where giving the child the father’s last name would be inappropriate and the father can not or should not be given charge of the child. Are polygamous men complaining that the offspring of their second and third wives (who in Turkey can only be “married” by religious rites, since polygamy is illegal) are not carrying their last name? Who was the pressure group for this change?
UPDATE 2: Madde 337 in the Turkish Civil Law Code specifies that if the mother and father of a child aren’t married, the mother is the legal guardian. As long as that part of the Code remains unchanged, I presume the name change won’t have any major repercussions.
