[Diary of a future bride] Step by step

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=176721&bolum=132

 Some Turkish men are very handsome, some are just handsome and some are down right ugly!  

Can I ask why will we never hear about Turkish women - foreign man relationship or marriage? I think it is rarer. Does the husband have to convert to Islam? Or will the parents accept a non-religious son-in-law? Will they send their girl into a new country?

 Maybe news of foreign men marrying Turkish women can´t make it to your region. Incidentally, I have four  friends who are married to foreign men, one with a German, another with an American and the other two with  British guys. I can say with much confidence that all of those marriages are quite happy ones. The one in Germany is getting a bit bored of the small German town (bride), the American guy happens to be one of my best buddies and he enjoys life in Istanbul. He knows certain parts of Istanbul better than me having lived here more than ten years.

In all relationships there is a potential for being fooled or making a wrong choice. As long as you believe that you have made the right choice, all the rest will clear up by itself in the course of time. The culture shock is only temporary, after a couple of years, what should be left behind for two of you is the world that you set up together with your spouse. It is difficult to find a soul mate but it may unfortunately be at least possible to lose him/her through lack of tolerance or mistakes or other kinds.

In asking this question, you should be very clear about the terms Turkish women, as opposed to Moslem women.

Not all Turkish women are Moslems and such non Moslem Turkish ladies have no problem with marrying non Moslem men, if their hearts so desire.

Strictly speaking, Islam does not allow Muslim girls to marry non Muslim men. In any non secular Islamic country where the marriages are enacted and registered through religious rituals only, it may not be possible to enact a proper marriage between a Muslim girl and a non muslim man, simply because the prevailing laws do not cater for such a mixed marriage. If a non Muslim man converts to Islam in sincerety however, he would qualify to marry a Muslim girl.

In secular Turkia however, the story is somewhat more complicated; the legal marriages in Turkia  are enacted according to civil laws. Civil laws (as opposed to religious laws) do not restrict marriages based on respective religions of the marriying couple, hence marriage of a Muslim girl to a non Muslim man is legally possible. For the Moslem Turks however, though a civil marriage is legally sufficient by law, the religious seremony must also be fulfilled; for the latter a non Muslim groom can not qualify.

Turkia seems to have developed a kind of moral flexibility in this aspect, where in such rare situations most people seem to agree that a civil marriage alone, can be honored.

I am happily engaged to a Turkish girl here in Australia and have been warmly welcomed by her family (who live in Ankara). I am not Muslim nor do I have any intention of converting (I mean no disrespect to the Muslim faith of course).

On the weekend just passed I also attended a wedding in Canberra for a Turkish woman who married an Australian man.I also know of a few other Turkish woman - Australian man relationships.

Surprisingly in my direct experience I have yet to encounter the reverse - an Australian woman married to a Turkish man. (Of course it happens, I´m just saying that I have yet to personally meet a couple of that sort).

I would be a bit unhappy at a multi-cultural marriage because of the divorce. Ok, when someone is married to an other human, nobody thinks it can happen later. But what will happen if they have a child?

Here is a bad example, who this event can becoma extremly wild. There were some sad news in the Hungarian media, when a Hungarian-Turkish couple fought for theirs son on Hungarian and Turkish courts and they couldn´t decide where he should live.  The Turkish father stole the boy (he was 10-13 age years old) and they hided him in a small Turkish town for months. Later they found the boy and they brought him back to Hungary, but he put drugs into her mother´s car after an uncle´s advice so the Serbian frontier-guard arrested her own Hungarian mother.

Let me start with a clarification: There is no country on the face of Earth known as Turkia. It just wrongly exists in some prescriptive minds. The name of our country is Turkey. If an Indian

person asked me to call their country Hindustan on account that Hindistan may also mean   "country of  turkeys", I would just laugh at him and draw his attention to the existence of homonyms in many languages. Please don´t ever wrongfully pick up these make-believe words.

As for the matter at hand, it takes a personality of a certain kind for such an incident to repeat. There are good guys and bad guys everywhere. I understand a divorce would prove much more catastrophic if the spouses prefer to live in their own coutries. Usually, either party considers the child to be  only in their own possession disregarding the rights of the other spouse. Unless, you are willing to find a comprimise, it doesn´t matter where you are.

If I had a child in Hungary who is supposed to live there, I would either also live or frequently fly there.

Clarification : For me its not Turkey or Turkiye ! For me is Turcia !

Someone on TC started the ´Turkia´ thing (I think it was Erdinc 2 or 3 years ago) - so that people pronounced ´Türkiye´ properly.  But I not refer to ´Turkia/Türkiye´ if I was speaking English and if I was (trying) to speak Turkish then I would, of course, say ´Türkiye´. 

Surely it´s normal to say the name of the country/city/nationality you are talking about as it is pronounced in the language you are speaking!  I wouldn´t say to a French person -  ´Je suis English´ or ´I am Anglais´, ´J´habite en London´ or ´I live in Londres´ - so it´s either ´Türkiye´de otuyurum´ or ´I live in Turkey´ - not a mix!

(Sorry - a bit offtopic but that ´Turkia´ thing has annoyed me for quite a while!!)