re religious vs civil marriage in Turkey

Submitted by yasemin (Canada), Feb 7, 2008 at 21:27

In Turkey the law recognizes only the civil ceremony and it's most common to have the civil ceremony first and then the religious ceremony. However, that being said, in rural areas and even within more traditional parts of urban centres, sometimes only the religious ceremony takes place. This is illegal as far as I understand. Regarding bigamy, the imam is supposed to check the marital status records for the couple before performing a marriage. I'm told that they don't always do this and thus bigamy is possible. Don't know how common it is. I learned all this by internet research.

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