recommended means to protect girl orphans from
deprivation. Islamic law suggests foster-family and
marriage institutions instead of legal adoption,
although adoption as a term still exists.
The term evlatlık(adopted child) referred to fos-
tering in Turkey. It was also used to categorize the
stepchildren of the husband. Wives did not have the
right to accept a stepchild as evlatlık. Different
words, such as ahiretlik, besleme, and yanaçma
were strictly related to the Islamic tradition of fos-
tering, and socially degraded the child’s status.
However, ironically, as these children’s actual posi-
tion declined in households, the term evlatlık
gained more common use.
Muslim households overwhelmingly preferred
girls for fostering in Turkey. Since the fostered boy
would have the status of a stranger, the women in
the household would have to be careful regarding
their veiling. This was one of the reasons why
mainly girls were chosen. They were used for
domestic labor as they learned their gender role.
Moreover, they were semi-legitimate sexual objects
for the male members of the household, as in the
case of domestic slaves. The potential of the fos-
tered girl has been the subject of numerous novels,
short stories, and diaries in Turkey.
The practice of fostering children spread with the
waves of mass migration and wars in Ottoman
society. The critical date for this was 1864, when
over a million Caucasian migrants entered Otto-
man territory and started to sell their girls and
women as slaves. In order to restrict the slave trade,
the government distributed unprotected girls and
women to Muslim middle-class families as evlat-
lıks. This official arrangement redefined and in
consequence degraded the status of evlatlıks. Very
often they were treated like domestic slaves or ser-
vants. This policy formed an example for later gov-
ernments. During the succession of wars from 1911
to 1922, internal conflicts and mass migration
resulted in the emergence of thousands of orphans
in need of protection. While boys were sent to
boarding schools, the military, or to workshops
as apprentices, girls were made servants to urban
Muslim families where they would be called
evlatlık.
The republican government abolished Islamic
law and promulgated an adjusted Swiss Civil Code
in 1926. The new order allowed individuals who
did not have children and were over age 40 to
legally adopt any person who was at least 18 years
younger than themselves. Adoption contracts had
to be made in state courts. Adopted children had all
the rights and duties of biological children.
Legal adoption conflicted with the ongoing prac-6 adoption and fostering
tice of having evlatlıksas well as with Islamic law.
The new law therefore permitted the adopter to
prepare an additional official contract to restrain
the inheritance rights of the adopted child.
Moreover, if he wanted to marry his adopted child,
he could repress his adopter status, again through a
court decision. The adopted child had the right to
inherit from her/his biological parents as well.
These items aimed to avoid religious dispute on
legal adoption.
The Civil Code did not ban the tradition of hav-
ing evlatlıks. For years poverty and misery urged
peasants to give away or sell their daughters of ages
six to seven to urban families. But with the prohibi-
tion of slavery and slavery-like practices in 1964,
the tradition of having evlatlıks faded away.
Although girl child labor in domestic work is still
present, they are no longer described as evlatlıks.
The foster-family program, which was estab-
lished in 1949, aims to provide temporary homes
for unprotected children until age 18. The govern-
ment pays the expenses of fostered children to the
families, and supervises them periodically. It never
became popular, partly because officials had to be
very strict with the families to end the exploitation
of girls embedded in cultural practices.
In 2001, a different civil law was enacted in
Turkey. Legal adoption rules became milder. The
minimum age limit for the adopter was lowered to
30, and this was disregarded for couples with five
years of marriage. Legal adoption is becoming
increasingly popular in Turkey. There are thou-
sands of families on the government waiting list.
Girls under age two are preferred, although gender
balance exists among the children already adopted.Bibliography
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sesi (Adoption institute in Turkish customary law), in
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