Writing in Turkish for the daily BirGün, columnist Selin Nakıpoğlu marks a century of the Turkish Civil Code of 1926. She argues it was far more than legal modernisation: it ended polygamy and unilateral divorce, introduced civil marriage, gave women equal inheritance and property rights, and replaced religion-based legal systems with one secular framework. In her words, it turned subjects into citizens.

Her warning is that these gains can be lost. She points to family-law practice that weakens equality, rhetoric pushing women back into secondary roles, compulsory mediation in family disputes and attempts to put religious references in place of secular law. For freethinkers, it is a clear case of why separating religion and state protects the most vulnerable.

Source: Selin Nakıpoğlu, BirGün (Turkish) (2026-11-07)

Summarised by the FTI newsdesk.