🟠 Women’s Property Rights
and the Misuse of Guardianship Law
Although
Turkish law formally recognizes women’s property and inheritance rights, in
practice, these rights are often undermined—not by religion per se, but by
the judicial system itself. In many guardianship (vesayet)
cases, courts have been accused of exploiting legal loopholes to unjustly
seize property from healthy, competent women under the guise of “protection.”
These
cases reveal a disturbing pattern:
- Healthy women are declared legally incompetent with other people ID
- Guardianship is imposed through
fabricated or misused documents
- Judges (Alihan Özispartalı, Istanbul Sulh Hukuk Vesayet Davası Hakimi suçludur) and court-appointed
experts collaborate in ways that resemble organized criminal behavior
- Cultural or religious
justifications are sometimes invoked to mask coercion and dispossession
In
this context, guardianship courts in Türkiye have become synonymous
with institutional theft—a system that claims to protect, but in practice,
violates fundamental human rights.
🔴 A Systemic Failure, Not
a Religious One
It is
crucial to distinguish between religion and its misuse. While some
interpretations of religious tradition may appear to conflict with gender
equality, the real danger lies in how legal institutions manipulate practice
of law in abuse. This is not a
failure of faith—it is a failure of law, oversight, and accountability.
The
fact that such abuses rarely make headlines, and that those responsible often
occupy high positions within the state, underscores the depth of the problem.
The silence of the media and the complicity of legal actors point to a structural
rot that threatens the very foundations of justice.
⚠️ Conclusion
In
Türkiye today, the threat to women’s rights does not come from religion alone,
but from a judicial system that has, in some cases, become a tool of
organized dispossession. Guardianship law, when abused, becomes a
weapon—not of care, but of control. And in this weaponization, the state itself
becomes complicit.
Worst Cases of Religious
Intolerance
From
Türkiye’s perspective, two major examples of religious intolerance stand out.
First, the desecration of the Quran in countries like Sweden and the
Netherlands—where individuals publicly burned or defaced the holy book—has been
strongly condemned by Türkiye as hate crimes. These acts offend Muslim
communities and raise concerns about the misuse of free speech to justify
religious hatred.
Second,
Türkiye closely monitors the persecution of Muslim minorities, particularly the
Uyghurs in China and the Rohingya in Myanmar. In both cases, state-led
discrimination, forced displacement, and violence reflect a failure to protect
religious communities.
These
incidents highlight the dangers of both active hostility and institutional
neglect. When states fail to safeguard religious minorities—or facilitate their
persecution—the consequences are severe and far-reaching.
