Domestic slave use was widespread among the
Muslim elites. Ubicini (1998) claimed that some
households had hundreds of slaves and that slaves
constituted one third of the Muslim population of
Istanbul in the early nineteenth century. Restriction
of slave trade, economic crises, and the spread of
Western ideas gradually reduced the total number
of slaves. In 1907, about one fifth of the households
had slaves; most of these had one or two slaves
(Özbay 1999).
In the period from the Ottoman-Russian War in
1877 to the establishment of the republic (1923),
war casualties, internal conflicts, and mass migra-
tion from the Balkans and Caucasia to Anatolia led
to a radical increase of single-parent families, non-
family, and single person households. In 1885 the
proportion of non-family and single person house-
holds reached 30 percent in Istanbul and declined
to 20 percent in 1907 (Duben and Behar 1991).
Even in 1907, 14 percent of all households heads
were female. This proportion often did not include
single-parent households. Women tended to declare
their sons, no matter how young they were, as
heads. During these years, for the first time Muslim
women were allowed to work in urban areas (Özbay
1998a). Thousands of girl orphans and daughters
of poor villagers had to work as residential servants
in middle-class urban households (Özbay 1999).
Patriarchal extended family living, though not a
dominant type, was idealized by the masses. The
nationalist state advocated monogamous, simple
families with no servants as the ideal national fam-
ily (milli aile). It required that religious marriage be
contracted only after fulfillment of the civil mar-
riage contract, which was part of the Civil Code, in
which polygamous marriage was restricted and
inheritance and divorce rights for women were
given, yet male headship was acknowledged. Ac-
cordingly, the law allowed men to decide upon the
location of the marital house, and a woman had to
obtain the permission of her husband to work out-
side the house. The family was considered to be the
basis of society and this statement was included in
the constitution. The state encouraged marriages
and high fertility. This exaggerated concern with
the family shaped the place of women in the family
as well as in society. When the male deficiency in
population recovered women retired from the labor
force and many of them devoted their life to their
family members and to good housekeeping activi-
ties in order to be “modern” and good citizens.
The findings of the first nationwide survey on
family indicated that the dominant type was a
nuclear family household in both urban and rural
turkey 261areas in 1968 (Timur 1972). Patriarchal extended
households were found among well-to-do families.
Thirty years later, in 1998, the proportion of simple
family households increased to 72 percent. Multi-
ple family households declined considerably to 10
percent. Research conducted in an Anatolian town,
Ere(li, revealed that while former multiple family
households of the elite rapidly turned to the nuclear
form, a relatively small proportion of such house-
hold type was adopted by lower-middle classes
solely as a survival strategy between 1962 and
1982 (Özbay 1998).
The average household size was 5.6 persons
in 1968 and declined to 4.2 in 1998. This was
partially related to declining fertility. In 1965 the
state adopted a policy to reduce family size and
advocated family planning methods for couples
who wanted to control their family size. Total fer-
tility rate declined from 7 to 2 children per family
between 1950 and 2000 (Yavuz 2003).
Consanguineous marriages constituted 25 per-
cent of the total marriages in 1998 (Hancıo(lu et al.
2001). This high proportion helps maintain the
prevailing family-oriented lifestyles. Children usu-
ally stay with their parents until they marry (Koç
2002). Turkish families are protective of their
elderly members, who, however, prefer to live in
separate households close by. The incidence of co-
residence with the elderly was low (20 percent),
and that of living nearby was quite high (50 per-
cent) in 1988 (Aytaç 1998). Increased life ex-
pectancy did not lead to a higher proportion of
extended living, but instead to an increasing pro-
portion of solitary, simple, and other non-family
living patterns. Single person households (5 per-
cent) were mostly females, widows and particularly
elderly women, although those with young and
unmarried single people consisted mostly of men.
The proportion of non-family households was low
(2 percent), though it slightly increased between
1978 and 1998; they mostly consisted of kin mem-
bers. Gay and lesbian living is not significant.
The proportion of female-headed households is
low (10 percent in 1998) but shows an increasing
trend. These households consist of single-parent as
well as solitary and non-family households. They
are poorer than the average (Yavuz 2003).
Long years of feminist pressures coming from
inside and outside Turkey resulted in a new Civil
Code in which gender inequality was eliminated in- Wives are no longer assistants of their hus-
bands, but are equals with them in the eyes of the
law. In practice, gender inequality in the family
continues. Division of labor within the household