By Nazlan Ertan
İmam nikahı, or dini nikah (religious wedding), has long been a battleground for women’s rights activists who strongly oppose religious marriage and support strict penalties for imams and muftis (Muslim clergy) who conduct religious unions without first ensuring that the couple has undergone a civil ceremony.
Turkey’s laws on marriage are regulated by the 1926 Civil Code, which abolished polygamy, introduced civil marriage, and mandated that any religious ceremony—should citizens of the newly established secular state choose to hold one—must follow civil registration in a municipal office. In villages, chieftains (elected officials) conduct the ceremony, while consular officers perform civil ceremonies for Turks abroad. Under the 1926 laws, religious officers—whether imams, priests, or rabbis in Turkey’s multi-faith society— had no authority to perform official weddings, as they cannot verify the legal requirements, such as the age of the would-be spouses or whether they are already married.
The law received its first blow in 2015 when the Constitutional Court declared that civil registration of marriage was no longer a prerequisite for a religious ceremony. The court abolished jail sentences for both the couple and the person performing the religious ceremony without a marriage certificate.
Women’s groups expressed outrage, arguing that the decision opened the door for underage couples - particularly from conservative backgrounds where young girls were forced into marriage - to consider themselves “married” while they awaited the age of consent for official registration. They claimed that the de-penalization of religious weddings would increase their frequency, depriving women and children of their legal rights. The AKP government, however, argued that the ruling would reduce secret religious marriages and provide all women with equal civil rights in the event of divorce.
This same reasoning was invoked in 2017 when parliament—dominated by the AKP majority—passed a law allowing muftis to conduct civil marriages. “Want it or not, this will be passed by the Parliament!” declared President Erdoğan, defying opposition parties and women’s rights organizations that objected.
The government promoted the law as a simplification of bureaucratic procedures. Diyanet, Turkey’s omnipotent religious affairs directorate, issued several edicts stating that a religious ceremony was not a replacement for civil marriage, urging believers to have a civil ceremony before they lived as husband and wife.
The opposition argued that the law breached the secular state’s principles and expressed concerns that the muftis might overlook cases of underage marriage or polygamy. The CHP challenged the law in the Constitutional Court, but the court ruled in favor of it in December 2018.
Why, then, is “imam nikahı” the word of the week?
It is due to the wedding of İbrahim Esad, the younger son of Halil Özdemir, the head of the Court of Cassation’s Third Civil Chamber, which handles cases related to unjust enrichment, lease agreements, contract law, and consumer law. Recently, the wedding, officiated by the Çankaya mufti, was attended by high-ranking figures from both the judiciary and the ruling party.
Özdemir’s older son was married in a civil ceremony conducted by the mayor of Keçiören in 2018, just as the regulation was under Constitutional Court review.
At İbrahim Esad’s wedding, after the mufti conducted the civil marriage ceremony, he prayed for the couple's happiness. Notable witnesses for the wedding included Bülent Arınç, estranged AKP founder, Ömer Kerkez, president of the Court of Cassation, and Ahmet Yener, president of the Supreme Election Council.
The significance of this wedding lies in its symbolic reflection of the ongoing shift in Turkish law and the lawmakers, who seem eager to have religious figures conduct civil marriages—a clear representation of the growing intersection between state and religion in everyday matters from schools to hospitals.
