Turkey
Changes In Family Life
Only a generation ago, the majority of Turkish families lived in rural areas, and every member of the family had a place, a position, and a function. Young children and the elderly were cared for, everyone else contributed what he or she could. With the onset of industrialization and urbanization, however, the extended family network came under great strain. Fewer of the elderly, for example, can now live with their sons or daughters in small urban apartments, and so they must make other arrangements. The urge to acquire more material goods (televisions, automobiles, mobile telephones, etc.) has become more important, and the family may enjoy the benefits of a consumer society only by reducing its contributions to the extended family.
Faced with perceived threats towards the traditional Turkish family in 1990, the Prime Ministry Division for Family Research convened the First National Assembly on the Family (Aile Surasi). Attended by selected scholars, social service professionals, civil representatives, politicians, bureaucrats, and the media, the assembly developed multiple policy recommendations in family-related areas of economic life, health and nutrition, and other areas, with resolutions calling for increased child-care services and more public attention to the care of the elderly.
Constant change is a permanent aspect in most Turkish families. Some of this change is reflected in national statistics, but some is not. Change has also rearranged family values and priorities, to the extent that suicides, for example, rose because more people simply could not cope with modern life. Suicides have been uncommon in Turkey, but analysis suggests that the most prevalent reasons in 1998 were related to family and marital life, with 26 percent of suicides attributed to incompatibilities and conflicts within the family. Additionally, 13 percent of suicides were due to emotional relationships or the inability to marry the person of one's choice. These two categories together account for the majority of suicides. Most suicides occur in relatively young age groups (15–34), with women being more prone to suicide (SIS 1998).
As Turkey strives to become a successful member of the European Community, it is also changing its Civil Codes (2002), with profound implications for the rights of the individual, the legal status of women, children's rights, democratic practices, and social services.
Increasingly, the European and American models, through mass media, films, international agreements, more foreign tourists (more than 9 million in 2001), along with the explosive development of the Internet, are influencing the younger generation and providing alternatives to the traditional family structure. Literally, and often painfully, Turkey has, in the words of a former politician "leapt an era" and moved in a lifetime from being an insular, predominantly rural, and conservative society to a prominent player in the larger world, in almost every category of modern development. This change is continuing, with constant reliance on and modifications of traditional family structures throughout Turkey.
See also: ISLAM; KURDISH FAMILIES
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AKILE GURSOY
Additional topics
Marriage and Family EncyclopediaMarriage: Cultural AspectsTurkey - Geography And Demographics, Family Life And Structure, Issues Related To Family Life, Changes In Family Life