The Class of Alimony in the Centenary of the Civil Code

For the Women Left Outside the Celebration Photograph

October 4, 2026 at 11:07 AMAuthor: Oğuz Demirkapı

A Hundred-Year Law, an Unfinished Bargain: The Class of Alimony in the Centenary of the Civil Code

Dear Young Comrades,

Look closely at this photograph.

The Union of Turkish Bar Associations shared it this morning: Mustafa Kemal walking in front of a crowd, and beside him women in bell-shaped hats and long coats. Above them, in red letters, a date: 4 October 1926. Below: Blessed Be the Centenary of the Entry into Force of the Turkish Civil Code.

A fine photograph. But notice: the women in it are all urban, all educated, all of the same class. In that year more than three quarters of the women living in this country were in the village. In the field, in the stable, at the loom. They did not enter the photograph.

In this piece we will ask three questions:

What did the Civil Code bring?
Whom did it reach, and whom did it not?
A hundred years later, what are they trying to take back?

The name of the third question today is alimony. The Constitutional Court's decision on indefinite alimony was published in the Official Gazette four days ago, on 30 September. Parliament is waiting this month for the 13th Judicial Package. The centenary celebration and the calendar of the step backwards fell in the same week. This is a coincidence. But coincidences too have to be read.

Introduction: What Will We Tell, in Brief?

Before going into the detail, let us summarise the whole piece in a few paragraphs.

What did it bring? The Civil Code, which entered into force on 4 October 1926, separated family law from religion and from the community with a text taken from Switzerland. It brought monogamy, civil marriage, divorce in court, equality in inheritance and in testimony. It made the woman an individual in law. This was a great step. But the Code of Obligations entered into force on the same day: the Civil Code was the foundation document of secular law, and equally of the bourgeois legal order resting on the abstract, equal, property-owning individual.

What did it not bring? It counted the husband as "the head of the union." It tied a woman's work, until 1990, to her husband's permission. And, most important, with the regime of separation of property it counted the woman's unpaid labour inside marriage as legally nothing.

Whom did it reach? The urban, educated woman. It reached the peasant woman and the woman worker only as organised labour carried it there. The population amnesties issued again and again throughout the Republic are the official confession that, for one section of society, the code remained on paper.

What happened in the world? In the same year Soviet Russia issued a family code that turned domestic labour into a sharing of property, and ten years later it stepped back. Until 1965 in France, until 1977 in West Germany and until 1988 in Switzerland, the married woman was in her husband's shadow. Iran went back in 1979, Turkey in 2021. The lesson is plain: there is no right already won; there is a right that is defended.

What changed in 2001? The new Civil Code abolished the headship and brought participation in acquired property, but only for property acquired after 2002. Most women who married before 2002 have today a single security in their hands: indefinite poverty alimony.

What is happening today? On 4 June 2026 the Constitutional Court annulled the phrase "indefinitely," which it had found in conformity with the Constitution in 2012; the decision will enter into force on 30 June 2027. The draft of the 13th Judicial Package ties alimony to half the length of the marriage, at least five years, and it also foresees cutting off alimony already finalised after one year.

What does the class reading say? Alimony is a social security the state ought to undertake, transferred to the former spouse. Removing it does not raise the male worker's wage, and it impoverishes the woman further; the winner is the state, rid of social expenditure, and capital, sure that unpaid care labour will continue. The countries where alimony is little are the countries where the nursery and social security are much. Turkey is removing the bill and is not bringing the service.

What is to be done? Carry the argument from the question "is the man the victim, or the woman?" to the question "why does the state leave both of them alone?" Demand an alimony guarantee fund, nurseries, employment, and a contribution buy-back for older women. And count the nine months.

Now let us go into the detail.

One Day, Two Codes: 4 October 1926

The Turkish Civil Code (Türk Kanunu Medenîsi) no. 743 was adopted on 17 February 1926 and entered into force on 4 October 1926. Its source was the Swiss Civil Code (ZGB), adopted in 1907 and in force from 1912. The commission of the Minister of Justice, Mahmut Esat Bozkurt, largely translated the text, and adapted it in a few places.

Now look at the calendar again. On the same day, 4 October 1926, another code entered into force: the Code of Obligations, no. 818. Contracts, sale, rent, the contract of service, tort. In the same year a Penal Code came from the Italian model, and a Commercial Code from German and Italian sources.

This order is not an accident. On one side, the law of persons and of the family: who is a person, who may marry, who is an heir. On the other, the law of contract: who makes an agreement with whom, and on what condition, and how property changes hands. The two are two storeys of the same building. There is no market without an individual who can make a contract. And without a market there is no need for an individual who can make a contract.

Comrade, grasp the movement here. The legal revolution of 1926 was a passage from religious law to secular law; this was true, and it was a great step. But it was at the same time a passage from the Mecelle's fragmented world, based on community and on status, to the abstract, equal, property-owning individual of the bourgeois legal order. The Civil Code was for this reason both a text of emancipation and the foundation document of a class order. We have to see the two at once. Whoever sees one and not the other either becomes a devotee of the tomb, or a denier.

What Did It Bring? — From the Mecelle to the Civil Code

In 1917 an Ottoman Decree on Family Law had been issued, and two years later, in 1919, it had been repealed. By 1926 family law was still divided according to religious rules, schools of law, and communities. The Civil Code removed this at a single stroke.

Before 1926	After 4 October 1926
The man's right to marry four women	Monogamy; a second marriage is void
Religious marriage, no registration	Civil marriage compulsory, before a state official
The man's right to unilateral repudiation (talaq)	Divorce by a court decision; either party may sue
In inheritance, the daughter takes half the son's share	Equality in inheritance
In court, the testimony of two women equals one man	Equality in testimony
Custody with the father	Custody with the mother and the father (in a dispute the father's word prevails)
No age of marriage; child marriage ordinary	A minimum age of marriage
A separate law by school and by community	A single code for everyone

These are not small things. That a woman could not be thrown into the street by her husband with a single sentence; that she could go to court in her own name; that she could take an equal share with her brother from their father's inheritance. Four years later, in 1930, came the right to vote and to stand in local elections, and in 1934 in general elections.

Know this too: Switzerland, the country that "taught" its code to Turkey, gave women the federal vote in 1971. Thirty-seven years after Turkey. And Switzerland removed from its own code, in 1988, the provision that the husband was "the head of the marital union." The teacher can fall behind the student. The advance of law is not a straight line.

Nazan Moroğlu's sentence this morning puts the matter in the right place: the Civil Code is "the legal foundation of the woman's acceptance as an individual and as a citizen." (Cumhuriyet, 4 October 2026)

A legal foundation. Keep this word in mind. A foundation is not the building itself.

What Did It Not Bring? — The Head of the Household, Permission, and Unpaid Labour

The 1926 code made the woman an individual. But inside marriage it left her as the second individual.

The husband's headship. The code counted the husband as "the head of the union." The husband chose the home they would live in; the maintenance and the representation of the family were his.

Permission to work. A woman's exercise of a profession or a craft depended on her husband's explicit or tacit permission. This provision stayed in force from 1926 until 1990. Sixty-four years. What repealed it was not Parliament, but the Constitutional Court.

The surname. On marriage a woman took her husband's surname. This rule fell on 28 January 2024, with the Constitutional Court's annulment. (bianet) In November 2024 the government put into the 9th Judicial Package a provision that a woman could use her unmarried surname only together with her husband's; after the objection of women's organisations the article was withdrawn in the General Assembly on 7 November 2024. (Medyascope) Even a hundred years later, a watch is kept at Parliament's door for a surname.

Separation of property. And the most important, the least discussed. The statutory property regime of the 1926 code was separation of property. That is, whatever was registered in whose name during the marriage belonged to that person. If the house was bought in the husband's name, it was the husband's; if the field was titled in the husband's name, it was the husband's. That the woman kept that house for twenty years, raised the children, looked after an ill mother-in-law while her husband was at the factory or the shop, worked in the field as unpaid family labour, was legally nothing.

Engels had written this in 1884: the modern individual family is founded on the open or disguised domestic slavery of the woman. (The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State) The Civil Code did not abolish this slavery. It added equal inheritance and civil marriage, but it did not ask the return for the labour.

This question waited a full seventy-five years. And it is still not finished. The root of the alimony debate is here.

Between the Paper and the Village

The code entered into force in Ankara. It did not walk to the village.

The barest proof of this is the statutes the state itself issued. Throughout the Republic, "population amnesties" were issued again and again in order to register unions without a civil marriage, and the children born of those unions. The statutes no. 4727 in 1945, no. 6652 in 1956, no. 554 in 1965, no. 2526 in 1981, and no. 3716 in 1991. That a statute needs an amnesty every ten years is the official confession that, for one section of society, that statute remained on paper.

Why? Because civil marriage, a population register, a court, a lawyer, a title deed: all of these meant money, literacy, and access to the city. For the peasant woman of 1926, filing a divorce case was too far to reach. Equality of inheritance did not work where the inheritance was a single field and where that field remaining with the brother was counted as "custom." Polygamy was forbidden, but the second wife lived as "married by an imam," and the children remained without a father until an amnesty.

Law can declare equality. What realises equality is material conditions.

This is not said in order to shrink 1926. The opposite: to provide for the peasant woman and the woman worker what the Civil Code provided for the urban middle-class woman became the hundred-year programme of this country's left and of its women's movement. The Village Institutes, midwife and nurse schools, cooperatives, unions, the demand for nurseries. What carried the code to the village was not the code itself, but organised labour. So it is today.

The Same Year, Another Code: What Happened in the World?

In November 1926 a family code was adopted in Moscow too. The 1926 Code on Marriage, the Family and Guardianship of Soviet Russia also recognised de facto marriages without an official registration; it brought an equal division of property acquired during the marriage; it widened the obligation of alimony. This was the continuation of the 1918 code: civil marriage in place of religious marriage, divorce without a ground being shown, the abolition of the concept of the "illegitimate child," the spouses' being able to keep their surnames. (Family in the Soviet Union)

Two codes in the same year. One made the woman an individual and left her in separation of property; the other tried to turn domestic labour into a sharing of property. Kollontai's programme was plain: to socialise housework, to make the laundry, the canteen and the nursery public.

And let us keep our own record honest: in 1936 abortion was banned in the Soviet Union, and divorce was made harder; in 1944 divorce was made harder still, and the title "Mother Heroine" was given to mothers of many children. Industrialisation and war wanted population; the family was redefined accordingly. The thesis we wrote in the dossier Whose Family Is Safe? holds here too: whatever the relations of production require, the "family" is rewritten to match. Under right-wing governments too, and under bureaucratic administrations too.

Now let us look at the world from a wide angle:

Year	Country and development
1907 / 1912	Swiss Civil Code (ZGB) adopted / in force
1918 / 1926	Soviet Russia: civil marriage, free divorce; recognition of de facto marriage, equal division of acquired property
1926	Turkey: the Civil Code
1936 / 1944	Soviet Union: ban on abortion, divorce made harder
1956	Tunisia: Code of Personal Status, ban on polygamy, divorce in court (Code of Personal Status)
1965	France: a woman can work and open a bank account without her husband's permission
1967 / 1975 / 1979	Iran: Family Protection Law; suspended after the 1979 revolution (Family Protection Law)
1970 / 1975	Italy: divorce law (kept by the 1974 referendum), reform of family law
1977	West Germany: the "housewife marriage" model removed from the code
1981	Spain: the right to divorce after Franco
1988	Switzerland: the husband's headship abolished
1990	Turkey: the husband's permission for a woman's work annulled by the Constitutional Court
1995	Ireland: the right to divorce by referendum
2001 / 2002	Turkey: the new Civil Code, headship abolished, participation in acquired property
2004	Chile: the right to divorce
2011	Malta: the right to divorce by referendum
2021	Turkey: withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention
2022	Cuba: the Family Code, legal recognition of domestic care labour

Three lessons come out of this table.

The first: Women's legal equality is recent history in Europe too. Until 1965 in France, until 1977 in West Germany, until 1988 in Switzerland, the married woman lived in her husband's shadow. The narrative that "the West solved this long ago, we are behind" is false.

The second: Rights can be taken back. Iran stepped back in 1979, the Soviets in 1936, Turkey in 2021. There is no such thing as a right already won; there is a right that is defended.

The third: Every advance is the product of an organisation. The divorce referendum in Italy, the workers' and women's movement in Spain after Franco, the women's campaigns in Turkey leading to 2001. None of them was granted from above.

2001: The Second Wave, and the Account Left Half Finished

In the 1990s women's organisations campaigned for the Civil Code to be rewritten. The result was the Turkish Civil Code, no. 4721: adopted on 22 November 2001, in force on 1 January 2002.

What changed?

The "head" went. The spouses manage the union together, and choose together the home they will live in.
The age of marriage was equalised for women and men.
The statutory property regime became participation in acquired property. Property acquired by labour during the marriage is shared half and half in a divorce.

The third article tried to close the greatest lack of 1926. Domestic labour now had a return: whoever's name the house is bought in, the woman whose labour passed through that house has a half right.

But. The statute on entry into force provided that participation in acquired property would apply only to property acquired after 1 January 2002. For what came before, separation of property continued. So thirty years of the thirty-two years of labour of a woman who married in 1970 and divorced in 2003 were, again, legally nothing.

These women are today in their sixties and seventies. They have no property in their hands; most of them have no social-security contributions, because all their lives they were "housewives." They have a single thing in their hands: indefinite poverty alimony. And now that too is going.

Write this in the margin. We will come back to it shortly.

The Countdown: The Ten Years Leading to the Centenary

After 2001 the direction changed. The code stays where it is; the ground around it is being dug out.

Date	What happened
17 May 2012	The Constitutional Court found indefinite alimony in conformity with the Constitution
November 2017	Statute no. 7039: muftis authorised to perform civil marriage
20 March 2021	Withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention by a midnight decree
28 January 2024	The annulment of the rule on the woman's surname entered into force
7 November 2024	The article making the husband's surname compulsory was withdrawn from the judicial package
6 January 2025	2025 was declared the "Year of the Family"
2 May 2026	Circular no. 2026/4: the "Family and Population Decade"
4 June 2026	The Constitutional Court annulled indefinite alimony
23 June 2026	The alimony article was removed from the 12th Judicial Package
20 August 2026	The alimony draft of the 13th Judicial Package appeared in the press
30 September 2026	The annulment decision in the Official Gazette
4 October 2026	The centenary of the Civil Code
30 June 2027	The annulment enters into force

Put the first line and the eighth side by side. The same article, the same court. In conformity with the Constitution in 2012, contrary to it in 2026. The relevant articles of the Constitution did not change. What did?

We wrote the answer in the dossier Whose Family Is Safe?. What changed is what the state expects from the family.

Alimony: What Happened?

On 4 June 2026, on the objection of the 12th Family Court of Antalya, the Constitutional Court annulled the phrase "indefinitely" in article 175 of the Turkish Civil Code. The decision was taken by a majority; three members dissented. Merits 2025/156, Decision 2026/131. The annulment was published in the Official Gazette of 30 September 2026, no. 33386, and it will enter into force nine months later, on 30 June 2027. (Av. Murat Aydar, SonKarar)

The reasoning: an indefinite obligation limits, disproportionately, the right of property of the party who pays alimony; the "fair balance" between the parties is disturbed.

The court had examined the same article on 17 May 2012 (E.2011/136, K.2012/72) and had found no contradiction. When the ten-year waiting period expired, it was able to examine it again.

What the dissenting members said was this: alimony is not a reward or a punishment; it is a security against the economic collapse that divorce creates; childcare and housework, which women mostly undertake, create a gap in earning capacity that continues after the divorce. (BirGün)

In the majority's reasoning there is not a single figure on this gap, that is, on the statistics of women's labour. There is the right of property. There is no labour.

A class reading: Two rights were set against each other here: the property right of the person liable for alimony, and the right to life of the person entitled to it. The court chose property. This is the echo, a hundred years later, of the logic that put the Code of Obligations and the Civil Code into force on the same day in 1926: on one side two abstract, equal, property-owning individuals; on the other a person prevented for twenty years from acquiring property. When abstract equality is laid over concrete inequality, it protects the inequality.

What Does the Draft Say?

According to Habertürk's report of 20 August 2026, the model foreseen for alimony in the draft of the 13th Judicial Package prepared by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) is this: (Habertürk)

The duration of alimony will be half the length of the marriage.
However short the marriage, at least 5 years.
After the period ends, if an application is made within one year in the case of old age or of being unable to work, the judge will be able to extend the period.
Monthly alimony will be convertible into a lump-sum payment.
Alimony already finalised will be paid for one more year after the statute enters into force, and will then be cut off.
The divorce case will be decided first; alimony, custody, compensation and the division of property will be heard in separate cases.
In cases for the division of property, the limitation period will fall from 10 years to 5.

The Minister of Justice, Akın Gürlek, said on 18 September that the package would come to Parliament in October. As of 1 October the bill had not yet been submitted. (Habertürk)

Now let us lay the draft on three lives.

Ayşe. She married in 1998 at 22, and divorced in 2018 at 42. Twenty years. She never worked with social security. Under the draft her alimony lasts 10 years; it is cut off at 52. What a woman of that age, with zero contribution days and no profession, will meet in the labour market is plain: unregistered cleaning work, daily domestic labour, care work. She has no pension.

Fatma. She married in 1975 and divorced in 2005. All of the acquired property of a thirty-year marriage belongs to the time before 2002, so it is subject to separation of property; she has no share. Today she is 70, and her only income is indefinite alimony. Under the draft's transitional provision her alimony will be cut off one year after the statute enters into force. Is the possibility of extension open also to those subject to the transitional provision? What of the draft has appeared in the press does not say so.

Zeynep. She married in 2019, she has two children, she divorced in 2025. Custody is with her; according to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK), in 2025 74.6% of custody was given to the mother. A marriage of six years, alimony of at least 5 years. The alimony ends when the children reach school age; child maintenance (iştirak nafakası) is for the child, not for the career years Zeynep lost.

What is common to the three lives? In all of them the loss comes not from the length of the marriage, but from the unpaid labour undertaken inside the marriage. The draft measures duration by the calendar. It does not measure labour.

What Poverty Alimony Is Not

The debate has been so distorted that the statute itself has to be read first. Article 175 of the Turkish Civil Code:

"The party who will fall into poverty because of the divorce may request alimony from the other party, indefinitely, in proportion to that party's financial means, for their subsistence, provided that their fault is not heavier. The fault of the party liable for alimony is not sought."

Four things come out of this.

Alimony has no gender. The statute does not say "woman"; it says "party." A man impoverished because of divorce may also request alimony. As Moroğlu recalled this morning, alimony is not only women's right. (Cumhuriyet) That women overwhelmingly receive it is the result not of the statute, but of the division of labour.

Alimony is tied to the condition of poverty. Not everyone can receive it. A person who is not impoverished because of the divorce does not request it, and cannot receive it.

Alimony is limited by the means of the person liable. "In proportion to their financial means." Money that does not exist is not demanded from a man on the minimum wage.

"Indefinite" does not mean "for life, unconditionally." Under article 176, if the person receiving alimony marries again, the alimony ends of itself. If they live as if married without marrying, if their poverty ends, or if they lead "a dishonourable life," it ends by a court decision. If the parties' financial situation changes, it is raised or reduced.

So what is called "indefinite alimony" in fact means for as long as the poverty lasts. What the annulment puts in place is the power to cut it off when the calendar runs out, without asking whether the poverty continues.

Let Us Speak in Figures

In the alimony debate the things that spoke most were adjectives: "victim," "for life," "slavery." Let us look at the figures.

193,793 couples divorced in 2025; the crude divorce rate was 2.26 per thousand. 34% of divorces were in the first five years. (TÜİK, Marriage and Divorce Statistics 2025)
74.6% of custody was given to the mother.
The women's employment rate is 32.1%, men's 66.4%. Among women aged 25–49 with a child under 3, employment is 26.2%; among men in the same situation, 91%. (Cumhuriyet, TÜİK figures)
According to Selma Gürkan of the Labour Party (EMEP), average alimony is around 2,000 lira a month; many women cannot reach even that. (the same source)
According to the Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions (TÜRK-İŞ), the hunger line in August 2026 was 37,388 lira. The net minimum wage is 28,075.50 lira.

Put the last two lines side by side. Average alimony is about five per cent of the hunger line. Seven per cent of the net minimum wage. (The calculation is ours.)

So in this country the money that is fought over under the name "alimony" is, in most cases, not enough to keep a woman. It is a symbol. But the symbol matters: it is the symbol that the state accepts that labour spent inside marriage gives rise to a debt. What they want removed is not the money; it is this acceptance.

The sentence of the Women's Platform for Equality (EŞİK) says this: the matter was never the amount of the alimony; the matter is to take the woman's economic independence out of her hands, and to impose a hierarchical family model based on obedience. (Cumhuriyet)

Alimony in the World: Who Replaced What with What?

The sentence the government camp repeats most often: "There is indefinite alimony nowhere in the world." Let us look.

Country	Model	What lies underneath
Sweden and Scandinavia	Spousal alimony after divorce is exceptional; the principle is "providing one's own subsistence" (Marriage Code of 1987)	Universal nursery, individual taxation, individual pensions, high women's employment. The social state holds the place of alimony
Germany	2008 reform: "self-responsibility"; alimony for the spouse caring for a child, in principle until the child is 3. Correction in 2013: the length of the marriage will be taken into account again (LTO)	The reform impoverished women who had sacrificed a career to the family; five years later a step back was taken. If child maintenance is not paid, the state pays an advance (Unterhaltsvorschuss)
Massachusetts (USA)	Alimony Reform of 2011: the duration is a percentage of the length of the marriage (50% up to 5 years, 80% for 15–20 years); in marriages longer than 20 years, indefinite alimony is possible	It is accepted that in long marriages economic dependence is lasting
Florida (USA)	2023: permanent alimony abolished; durational alimony is 50–75% of the length of the marriage (Lowndes)	Applied to new and pending cases
Turkey (draft)	Half the length of the marriage, at least 5 years; alimony already finalised will also be cut off after one year	The nursery rate at the bottom of the OECD, women's employment 32%, social assistance tied to the household

The lesson that comes out of this table is the exact reverse of what the government tells.

The places where alimony is little are the places where the social state is much. The Swedish woman does not ask alimony from her former husband, because her child is in a public nursery, she herself is in a full-time job, and her pension is in her own name. Turkey takes Sweden's alimony model and does not take Sweden's nursery, its employment, its pension system. It removes the bill and does not bring the service.

Germany's experience is plain too: in 2008 alimony was restricted in the name of "self-responsibility," and in 2013 it was brought back for long marriages. Because self-responsibility does not get past being a slogan without a job that can support a person, and without a care infrastructure.

And the sentence "there is no indefinite alimony in the world" is not true either: Massachusetts, one of the most "liberal" states of the USA, still allows indefinite alimony in marriages longer than twenty years.

The "Victim of Alimony" Discourse: Grant It Its Due, Then Complete It

Now let us come to the hard part. Because among you, in your family, in your neighbourhood, there are men who pay alimony, who cannot pay it, who meet coercive imprisonment because they cannot pay it. The anger of a worker who works on the minimum wage, who cannot meet the rent, and who must also pay alimony to a former wife, is real.

We will not belittle this. Let us grant it its due: It is not possible to keep two households on the minimum wage. When alimony is taken from a worker's wage, that worker is impoverished too.

But then let us ask this question: in the fight between two poor people, who wins?

Alimony, in its function, is the transfer onto a private person of a social security that the state ought to undertake. Against the poverty of the divorced woman there is no social insurance, no public income support, no guarantee of employment, no nursery. Instead the state says: let the former husband pay. If the former husband is on the minimum wage, the state makes one poor person the other's insurance.

Now what happens when that alimony is removed? The male worker's wage does not rise. His rent does not fall. The woman is impoverished further. Not a single kuruş leaves the state's budget. The winner is neither the male worker nor the woman: the state, rid of making a social expenditure, and capital, sure that unpaid care labour will continue.

The debate offered to us	The debate we open
Is the man the victim, or the woman?	Why does the state leave both of them alone?
Indefinite, or for a term?	Does the poverty continue, or not?
The property right of the person liable for alimony	The return for unpaid labour
"Slavery for life"	The pension of twenty years of labour without contributions
To deter divorce	To make it possible to divorce
To protect the family	To protect the weaker party inside the family
To abolish alimony	An alimony guarantee fund, nurseries, employment

We told it in Why Do Workers Vote for the Right?: the right is skilled at turning the real anger inside the class back onto the class itself. The male worker's economic anger is steered not at his employer or at the state, but at his former wife. The discourse of "victims of alimony" is the name of poverty being governed by being divided between the genders.

What Is Being Covered Over?

Alimony looks like a matter of divorce. In fact it is a matter of being able to divorce.

A woman without economic independence cannot end a marriage in which she is subjected to violence. Where will she go? The number of shelters is known, there is no nursery, there is no job. The only security in her hands is to know that she will not fall into hunger after the divorce. When that security is tied to a calendar, the woman thinks twice before ending the marriage. Restricting alimony is restricting divorce by an indirect road.

The figures that the We Will Stop Femicide Platform announces every month say why this matters. In July 2026 alone, 25 women were killed, and 31 women lost their lives in suspicious circumstances. (Evrensel) For years the same thing has been among the most frequent grounds on which women are killed: wanting to divorce, to separate, to decide their own life.

And there is an article standing quietly in the same draft: cutting the limitation period in property-division cases from ten years to five. The time in which a woman, trying to put her life together after the divorce, saving the money for a lawyer, learning only later which property is with whom, can seek her right is cut in half. After alimony, the turn of acquired property comes. The gain of 2001 is being gnawed at in the centenary of 1926.

And the frame over all of it: Circular no. 2026/4, the "Family and Population Decade," which we examined in the dossier Whose Family Is Safe?. Fertility has fallen to 1.42; in the 2025 "Year of the Family" divorce rose to the peak of 25 years. The government's answer: make divorce expensive. Keep unpaid care labour inside the household. Talk about morality, do not talk about the budget.

The official narrative	The class reading
Indefinite alimony is unjust	For as long as the poverty lasts; it already ends on remarriage
The right of property must be protected	What of the right of the person prevented for twenty years from acquiring property?
It does not exist like this in the world	It exists in Massachusetts; in Sweden it is not needed, because there is a nursery
Men are victims	The poor man and the poor woman have both been left alone by the state
We are protecting the family	We are making divorce expensive, we are condemning the woman to marriage
We are speeding up the judiciary	We are cutting in half the time for seeking a right in the division of property
Blessed be the centenary of the Civil Code	While we celebrate, we are taking its articles back one by one

Concrete Tasks

Comrade, the centenary is not a ceremony; it is a calendar. Parliament is meeting this month; the bill will come in the weeks ahead. There are nine months. These things can be done:

Read the statute itself. Articles 175 and 176 of the Turkish Civil Code. Two articles, five minutes. You demolish the "for life" lie in the next conversation with one sentence: "If the person marries again, it already ends. What is it that you want ended?"
Move the argument. To the question "Is the man the victim, or the woman?": "Why does the state not give both of them a nursery, a job, social security?" Taking two poor people out of the fight and turning them towards a third party is the smallest and the most effective intervention.
Memorise three figures. 32.1% women's employment. 26.2% employment of women with a small child. 2,000 lira of average alimony against a hunger line of 37,388 lira.
Follow the draft, demand the text. On the day the 13th Judicial Package is submitted to Parliament, read the text. Mark separately the transitional provision, the conditions for extension, the limitation article. Record the difference between what appeared in the press and what entered the bill.
Bring your union in. A single question on the branch agenda: "What is the security, after divorce, of the women who are our members?" Then the demand: a nursery, parental leave, and paid leave and job security for a worker subjected to violence, written into collective agreements. As we showed in Whose Family Is Safe?, the nursery obligation in article 88 of the Labour Code covers one in a thousand workplaces.
Raise the demand for an Alimony Guarantee Fund. When alimony is not paid, let the state pay, and then collect it from the person liable. Germany has done this for child maintenance since 1980. This is the only solution that does not abandon the poor man to prison and the poor woman to hunger.
Do not forget marriages from before 2002. Older women who cannot benefit from participation in acquired property, and who have no contribution days, are the most defenceless section under this arrangement. For them, bring forward the demand for a retrospective contribution buy-back for housewives, and for a public old-age income.
Own the women's organisations. EŞİK, the We Will Stop Femicide Platform, Mor Çatı, the Federation of Turkish Women's Associations, the women's rights centres of the bar associations. Read their statements, join their signature campaigns, go to their actions. These organisations stood with us in Whose Family Is Safe?. Solidarity runs both ways.
Look at your own home. Unpaid care labour is not an abstraction; it is four hours a day of your mother, your sister, your spouse. Men comrades: the dishes, the laundry, care of the ill, the child. Class consciousness is tested in the kitchen too.
Know the history complete. Neither make an idol of 1926 nor deny it. Know what it brought, what it did not bring, whom it reached and whom it did not. Know the Soviet 1926, and 1936, too. Neither saint nor villain.
If you are a computing worker, take on the technical load. Take an archive of the draft texts, of the Constitutional Court decision, of the dissenting opinions, of the statements of the women's organisations. With a simple tool such as an alimony calculator, make visible what the draft will do to whose life. What is concrete persuades.
Count the nine months. 30 June 2027. Put the calendar on the wall. Every month an action, a statement, a meeting. There is no right already won; there is a right that is defended.

Dear young comrades,

We gave three answers to three questions.

What did it bring? The Civil Code made the woman an individual in law: monogamy, civil marriage, divorce in court, equality in inheritance and in testimony. This was a great step, and we will not shrink from saying so.

Whom did it reach? The woman who was urban, educated, from a property-owning family. It reached the peasant woman and the woman worker only as organised labour carried it there. The code made the woman an individual, but it did not see her labour inside the home; the return for that labour came seventy-five years later, and even then only in a half-finished way.

What are they taking back? Precisely the return for that labour. Alimony is a late and underpaid instalment of unpaid labour. What they want removed is not a payment of a few thousand lira; it is the acceptance that labour inside marriage gives rise to a debt.

The women in the photograph shared this morning walked, a hundred years ago, with a statute. Today a part of those celebrating that statute's hundredth year are, in the same week, taking its articles back one by one. Sharing the photograph is easy. Protecting the statute behind the photograph takes organisation.

In 1926 the law declared equality. What we see in 2026 is that equality exists not by being declared, but by being defended.

A hundred years ago the statute made the woman an individual. A hundred years later, what will keep her an individual is not the statute, but the organised woman and the organised worker standing in the same rank.

Related Pieces of Ours

Family, care labour, and the state

Whose Family Is Safe? — the "Family and Population Decade," care labour, nurseries and the budget
From Obscenity to National Security: The Anatomy of a Forty-Eight-Hour Wave of Censorship

Labour and class

TÜİK: Two Figures, One Country: 8.1% and 30.6% — women's labour and the ideology of statistics
Why Do Workers Vote for the Right? — class anger steered to the right
The Bell Does Not Ring the Same for Everyone

History, and settling accounts

12 September: The History, Balance Sheet, and Present of a Class Coup

Sources

The day

The Constitutional Court's alimony decision

The 13th Judicial Package

Responses

Data

Statute and history

Alimony in the world

Theoretical background

Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884)
Alexandra Kollontai, writings on the socialisation of domestic labour

This piece is published on Knowledge Commons. The ratio calculations (the ratio of average alimony to the hunger line and to the minimum wage) are ours, and they are stated in the text. The sample lives (Ayşe, Fatma, Zeynep) are constructed in order to show the effect of the draft. You may reproduce it under the CC BY-SA licence, with attribution. Reproduce it.

Tags:#women#alimony#civilcode#law #constitution#statute