TURKEY: Monogamous

• Share

Except in "unusual cases," Turks are henceforth to be monogamous. That is the substance of a law recently passed by Parliament at Angora.

Most of the city Turks have for some years been monogamous, partly because of economic reasons. Even the last Calif had but one wife, who bore him two babes. In the country, however, where a wife might be bought for payment in farmyard livestock, polygamy has been more generally in force.

The Koran permits a man four wives, but many a Turk has beer guilty of concubinal cupidity and has excessively multiplied that number Nevertheless, Turks have for long taken pride in pointing fingers oi scorn at the prostitution of worrier in the Occident, which was a thing unknown to polygamous, Turkish Turkey.

The new law is the index finger of a new age in Turkey.