Hurriyet Daily News reports that Albayrak had been hired to photograph the July 5th wedding at Turgut Özal Nature Park in the eastern Turkish province of Malatya. On the day of, when he noticed that the bride-to-be didn’t look like an adult, he asked the groom her age and learned that she was only 15.
“The groom had come to my studio some two weeks ago and was alone,” Albayrak tells the Daily News. “I saw the bride for the first time at the wedding. She’s a child, and I felt her fear because she was trembling.”
Albayrak then reportedly refused to continue as the wedding photographer and attempted to stop the wedding.
The argument soon turned physical when the groom attacked him as he was attempting to leave, Albayrak says. The photographer ended up breaking the client’s nose in the fight, according to local reports.
Albayrak confirmed the reports in a Facebook post, which has been met with widespread approval, attracting thousands of Likes and hundreds of overwhelmingly positive comments.
“I wish this had never happened, but it did,” Albayrak writes. “And if you were to ask me if I’d do the same thing again, I’d say ‘yes.’ Child brides are [victims] of child abuse and no power on earth can make me photograph a child in a wedding gown.”
The legal minimum age for marriage in Turkey is 18-years-old for both sexes, and child marriage is punishable by imprisonment for men who marry underage girls. Despite being outlawed, however, child marriage is still prevalent in the country and remains a controversial political issue.
btw – let’s remind ourselves, americans, that unlike turkey, in the US the legal minimum age for marriage is only 18 in two states. in alabama, you can be married as young as fourteen years old if you have “parental permission”. in california, you can get married under 18 if you go to counseling, have a parent with you when you apply for the marriage license, and appear before a judge. in some states, there isn’t even a specific minimum age for marriage.
the minimum marriage age for girls in new hampshire is 13 years old.
child marriage is not an “over there” problem, it happens right here, legally. any one of us might find ourselves called upon to break somebody’s nose if we encounter something like this occurring. we also have a responsibility to support groups and laws trying to end child marriage in this country.
felt like reblogging this because i was almost forced to marry when i was younger then 18. i don’t remember the exact age, but i might have been fifteen. my older sister (not really my sister, but the daughter of my guardians) was married to a mexican man (not that that matters) except he had an illegal immigrant brother and she was upset that this brother would be deported. i guess there were threats? either way she told her mom (my legal guardian) and they immediately turned to me. it wasn’t force, just guilt, thankfully. “don’t you love your family?” “he’ll be sent away, maybe tortured. do you want that?” “you are a rotten little shit and should go to hell!” “we aren’t asking you to fuck him! just get married and live with him and sleep in his bed for a while!” the only thing i had as ammo was that i had a boyfriend and didn’t want to marry this guy. he was in his late twenties and scared me. I knew damn well if i married him he would use it as an excuse to rape me.
Luckily, even though the abuse i already went through got worse for a while, i stayed firm and didn’t marry him. they couldn’t force me because they knew i had a ‘bad habit’ of being a stubborn whore (thier terms). he was never deported and i think he only said he would be so he could try to get to me. found out the only reason my ‘sister’ cared was because she was sleeping with him. all in all i am still mad about all of this. they would willingly try to pressure me into marrying a man almost twice my age and force me to share a bed with him and not care what happened after.
my point is, yeah, i got out of it where a lot of kids couldn’t, but the days i even thought i’d be forced to marry him were the more horrifying moments of my teen years. this shit is scary as fuck and completely sick! i don’t care if this fits in on my blog, this shit is legalized pedophilia and statutory/marital rape.
Marshmellowmilktea 