Outrage in Turkey After State Agency Says Girls Can Marry From Age Nine

ANKARA, Turkey (AFP) — Turkey’s religious affairs state agency came under heavy criticism on Thursday from the main opposition party after it said girls as young as nine could marry under Islamic law.

The Diyanet religious affairs directorate said on Tuesday the minimum age for girls to marry was nine, while for boys it was 12, according to Turkish media including the Hurriyet daily quoting the agency’s official website.

The post, which took the form of an explanatory statement on Islamic law, has since been taken down, after a backlash from the opposition and women’s rights groups.

The head of the High Commission of Religious Affairs Ekrem Keles on Thursday told Hurriyet that the earliest age for a girl to marry is 17 and 18 for a boy.

“Forget a nine or a 10 year old child marrying, a child at 15 should not marry and should not be married,” he said.

The secularists lost because they were enthralled with European Social Democracy.

It’s easy to see why the Turkish elites chose Social Democracy. What can you build conservatism in Muslim countries on? Western conservatism is directly or indirectly based on Christianity. In Muslim countries you have no relevant number of Christians and you can’t build any civilized form of conservatism on Islam (unless you can bring the Mutazalites back).

I suppose the Turkish elites could have chosen classical liberalism/libertarianism, but this movement was very much in the minority among Western intellectuals in the 20th century and was never electorally successful unless aligned with conservatism.

I’ve read that the cause of the rise of the Turkish Islamists isn’t ideological, but demographical - the people in Anatolia have had more babies than the people in Rumelia. Apparently, the Turkish elites were unable to secularize the Anatolians through government schools and lost the fight.

Hmmm. Wonder how far my pension will go in Turkey?Dunno, Dogbert41 - are you retired? Prices weren’t all that different than in the States. Depending on the fluctuations in the exchange rate. You can buy some things cheaper here.

But as to your insinuation, nothing is proven and, given that there have been, AFAIK, no allegations since his 1985 marriage I doubt anything ever would be proven.

Moore very well might find it impossible to prove a negative of the sort which is required to actually prove his innocence of long-past-statute-of-limitations charges, but that is a different question.

The nature of memory being what it actually is, even sincerely believed memories from forty years ago not backed by solid documentation may be entirely inaccurate. And of course that could apply to Moore himself as well as his accusers.

Severe issues of memory fragility corrupted the Jerry Sandusky case; the guy (“McQuery”) who started the whole fuss reported one thing to Joe Paterno and something much stronger nine years later. This completely disposes of the beef raised against Joe Paterno, in that no one could have seriously expected Paterno to take more action on such thin gruel. And in fact, the kid in the shower is a known adult now - and he denied the charge against Sandusky before changing his story under powerful social and financial pressure. Neither he nor Sandusky saw McQuery, and initially McQuery didn’t claim to have seen either of them, but only heard noises which he interpreted differently than what the boy in the shower later said.

Sandusky was not convicted on the charge which started the brouhaha. If you take “reasonable doubt” at all seriously, and you’re on the Sandusky jury, you gut it up and find “not proven” on the whole witch hunt. Knowing that you will be called a witch if you do.

The Most Hated Man in America: Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to Judgment

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