The 301 hearths scorched by fire and the Family Symposium

At the Medeniyet Foundation's previously planned Family Symposium in Ankara, held in an atmosphere of national mourning as the fire that fell upon the hearths of 301 families in Soma made itself felt.

The most meaningful subject for a meeting convened these days to think about the present and future of the family should probably be not so much the family's sociological development or transformation as the more concrete security problem it faces. For the news of traffic accidents and other workplace accidents in many parts of the country in these same days shows how little regarded, and yet in sum how widespread, the problem confronting our institution of the family is.

Divorce rates are a serious family statistic, but noticing these days that families affected by workplace accidents or traffic accidents are not taken as seriously for some reason gives rise to a separate emotion.

At the symposium, many valuable academics gave highly productive presentations on the present situation and future of the family, especially the Muslim family. I would like to share some of my reflections from the symposium, where I too gave a presentation:

1. There is a widespread pessimism about what kinds of family patterns this tendency of development, now under way in the family and set to become ever more pronounced, will produce in the future. Indeed, the fact that a significant part of these negative developments has been caused by the great distances modern society has covered on gender equality is a concrete manifestation of the paradox we are talking about.

2. Some forms of gender equality have been seen, in the long run, to be a strange gain that works against marriage, and even against women. One of the simplest examples of this is seen in property-sharing regimes. One of the initially uncalculated consequences of the property-sharing regime, which was obviously developed in general to protect women's rights, is that it has seriously reduced interest in and the practice of marriage. For fear of having to share their own property, which they earned before marriage or earned after marriage at a more active working tempo, many men do not readily agree to enter into the marriage contract. In an environment where laws operate under the concept of positive discrimination in favor of women, men reflexively tend to use the initiative they hold by adjusting it to protect themselves. One social consequence of this is an explosive increase in the number of couples living together without marrying, and this development works increasingly to the detriment of the family and, indirectly, of women. As might be expected, there is also a great increase in the number of women who, on reaching a certain age, have never married but, after a few cohabitations, must now live their lives alone.

3. In most European countries and in America, cohabitation without marriage is on the verge of becoming a dominant model. As of 1990, ten out of every hundred couples in America had chosen to live together outside marriage. This ratio has risen further since then. It is certain that in Europe the ratio is even higher. For in America, protecting and strengthening the family is not something that can be achieved by laws alone. On the contrary, the family is an institution kept alive by churches and urban communities. In fact, when what is at stake is the continuation of a way of life, laws alone are powerless to provide it.

4. By contrast, the factors affecting the growing rise of unmarried unions in America or Europe deserve attention. One of the most important reasons is that the excessive individualism that developed with modern life culture has turned into a kind of selfishness. No one wants to take on the series of responsibilities they would sign up to through marriage. If one can obtain without marrying whatever one might hope for from marriage at the primary level, and if the legitimate ground for obtaining it has been provided, a serious cultural motivation is needed to go for the alternative. Besides, we have to accept that highly advanced modern life progresses by destroying this cultural motivation and environment.

5. That a culture based on population planning has run up against a complete problem of population sterility is also a result of this way of life. Indeed, in many European countries today, no matter how much encouragement is attempted, there is no turning back from a culture of suppressing population once it has been acquired. The simplest reason for this is that, in people's expectations of life and their plans, the aptitude, the justification and the motivation for a self-sacrifice based on giving life to another human being and giving one's time have been completely lost.

6. In fact, all the sociological analyses that presented population planning as a necessary measure for a country's development have in time turned out to be problematic. It is quite clear that the population-suppressing propaganda imposed on Third World countries concerning the relationship between a country's having a large population and social development did not work in the developed countries. On the contrary, it is very clear that this story was used only by Westerners to manipulate the world's population balance in their own favor. Indeed, according to a UNESCO report prepared in 1984, it was determined that the supposed inverse relationship between population and progress is misleading, and that the correlation between the two is in fact not so definite.

Not so definite, but even so the population debate continues to be conducted under ideological pressure. We have no space left to dwell on the reasons. Perhaps we will continue later.