Turkey: Islamist Sex with Children Is Fine; Condemning It Is an Offense
by Burak Bekdil • March 2, 2023 at 5:00 am
As the Turkish government's topmost religious authority under Erdoğan, Diyanet is giving permission for an illegal act under the pretext of Islamic law: no obstacle for adoptive parents to marry, and consummate the marriage with, the adopted children who survived the earthquake.
The fatwa runs up against the Turkish Civil Code, according to the Istanbul Bar Association's Center for Children's Rights. Article 129 of the Civil Code bans marriage between an adopter and an adoptee, and Article 500 grants adoptees the right of succession, the Center said, noting that Diyanet's statements should not be against the Constitution or the laws.
Then a worse blow hit: Diyanet has filed a criminal complaint against prominent columnist Fatih Altaylıı on the grounds that he shared "grave insults against the institution and its personnel" on social media. If Altaylı is to be blamed for his tweet, his only wrong should be that he did not insult a pedophilic religious institution enough.
Erdoğan's focus is not on the relief effort or on the national agony. Turkey's broadcasting watchdog, RTUK, suspended the television stations Halk TV, KRT and Tele1, for three days and fined another, Fox TV, on grounds that "their coverage of the earthquake was unjustly critical of the government."
A general election is scheduled for this spring. The Turkish people and NATO deserve better.
This unpleasant story persists. Islamists, citing the hadith - a dubious source of Prophet Mohammed's sayings written 200 years after his death and on which Islamist scholars have never agreed for 14 centuries -- defend their lust for underage girls. [Here is a long list of Turkish Islamist practices of pedophilia in the past years.]
Most recently, in November, Turkey was shocked at news that a prominent Islamic sheik, the leader of a religious order fiercely devoted to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, had married off his six-year-old daughter to a 29-year-old disciple. Six! The girl had been forced into sex and became a mother at 14. She complained to the prosecutor's office, but Erdogan's authorities apparently did not want to bother the sheik.
