Turkish Remarriage Law ‘Discriminates Against Women’: Strasbourg Court

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled on Tuesday that the rights of a Turkish woman who wanted to remarry after a divorce were violated because of a “discriminatory” state-imposed 300-day waiting period.

The ECHR said in its ruling that the requirement “did not serve any pressing social need, was not proportionate to the legitimate aims pursued and was not justified on sufficient and relevant grounds”.

“The resulting interference with the applicant’s right to respect for her private life had not therefore been necessary in a democratic society,” it added.

The 300-day waiting time is a mandatory in Turkey for any woman who would like to remarry after a divorce. The law aims to avoid any disputes about paternity issues; it dates back to Ottoman-era Islamic sharia legislation.

Women can avoid the waiting period if they agree to undergo a medical examination to prove they are not pregnant.

The ECHR said that “constituted a form of direct, sex-based discrimination that could not be justified by the aim of preventing uncertainty as to the parentage of an unborn child”.

“The unequal treatment to which the applicant had been subjected on the grounds of her sex had been neither necessary nor objectively justified,” it added.

It noted that if there was any issue of determining paternity, “other legal avenues were available under current systems of law” in Turkey.

The situation for women’s rights has deteriorated under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s conservative, political Islamist government, which is expected to criticise the ECHR’s decision.

Tuesday’s ruling was a ‘chamber judgment’, meaning that both sides now have three months to ask for the case to be referred to the Grand Chamber of the ECHR for a final ruling.