The Constitutional Court’s decision to annul the phrase “indefinitely” in Article 175 of the Turkish Civil Code has reignited debate over alimony. Yet the central issue is not how long alimony should last, but who should bear the economic consequences of divorce in a society where women continue to face structural inequalities in employment, income, and unpaid care work.
The Constitutional Court’s recent decision to annul the phrase “indefinitely” in Article 175 of the Turkish Civil Code, which regulates post-divorce poverty alimony, has been on the agenda this week. While the Court’s reasoning has not yet been published, much of the discussion that followed has focused, once again, on the duration of alimony payments.
Yet the central issue is not how many years alimony should last. The real question is who should bear the risk of poverty that often emerges after divorce.
For years, public debates on alimony have largely revolved around alleged grievances experienced by those required to make payments. Far less visible are the experiences of women who face economic hardship after divorce, mothers who shoulder childcare responsibilities alone, those who have spent years outside the labour and women struggling to rebuild their economic independence.
The question we should be asking, therefore, is not how long alimony should last, but why women continue to need alimony in the first place. Alimony is not the cause of women’s economic vulnerability. Rather, it is a limited legal mechanism designed to mitigate the consequences of existing inequalities.
Why Does Alimony Exist?
Poverty alimony was not created to reward one party or punish another. Its purpose lies in the reality that when a marriage ends, the parties rarely continue their lives under equal economic conditions.
In Turkey, women still perform the overwhelming majority of unpaid care work. Childcare, elder care, domestic labour, and household management remain disproportionately women’s responsibility. This is not merely a matter of how daily tasks are shared; it has direct consequences for women’s education, career trajectories, income levels, and long-term economic independence.
Many women interrupt their careers during marriage, accept lower-paid work, or leave the labour force altogether. These outcomes are often less a matter of personal choice than of structural social conditions.
When divorce occurs, the economic costs that have remained largely invisible throughout the marriage become visible. While one spouse may retain their earning power and economic stability, the other is often left trying to build a new life with far more limited resources. It is precisely at this point that alimony becomes relevant. Focusing solely on the obligation to pay alimony means seeing only one side of the issue.
The Relationship Between Divorce and Poverty
Women’s organisations, bar associations, and advocacy groups have long drawn attention to a fundamental problem: the heightened risk of poverty faced by women after divorce.
For many women in Turkey, divorce is not simply a change in legal status. It often entails a loss of income, housing insecurity, difficulties financing childcare, barriers to re-entering the workforce, and deeper economic vulnerability. For this reason, alimony cannot be understood merely as a technical issue of family law. It is also a question of women’s economic rights, human dignity, and social equality.
Every discussion about limiting alimony should therefore be accompanied by another question: if alimony is restricted, what mechanism will fill the resulting economic gap?
At present, there is no clear answer.
The Same Constitution, A Different Outcome
One of the most striking aspects of the Constitutional Court’s recent decision is that it has reached a different conclusion from the one it reached on the same provision in 2012.
At that time, the Court rejected a challenge to Article 175, evaluating the protection of a spouse who falls into poverty after divorce within the framework of the social state principle and existing economic realities. The Court emphasised that the purpose of poverty alimony was not to enrich the recipient but to ensure that a spouse who would otherwise fall into poverty could meet their minimum living needs. It also stressed that the obligation existed only where the paying spouse had the financial means to contribute.
Today, however, the Court has reached a different conclusion.
Constitutional interpretation can, of course, evolve over time. Courts may respond to changing social conditions, emerging needs, and new legal perspectives. Yet the legitimacy of such a shift depends heavily on the persuasiveness of the reasoning offered. The forthcoming judgment will therefore reveal not only the Court’s approach to alimony, but also how it currently understands the principles of the social state, equality, and women’s economic rights.
What makes the change particularly noteworthy is that no comparable transformation has occurred in the economic realities faced by women since 2012. Significant gaps in labour force participation between women and men remain. Unpaid care work continues to fall overwhelmingly on women. Women’s poverty after divorce remains a serious social policy concern. Structural barriers to economic independence are still firmly in place.
The key question, therefore, is not only why the Court’s interpretation has changed, but why it has changed when the underlying realities have not.
What Is the Social State For?
At the heart of this debate lies the principle of the social state, enshrined in Article 2 of the Constitution.
A social state is not simply a state that provides economic assistance. It is a state that recognises that applying identical rules to individuals who are not equally situated does not necessarily produce justice. It therefore requires policymakers and courts to distinguish between formal equality and substantive equality.
In a society where women’s labour force participation remains lower than men’s, care responsibilities are not equally shared, childcare services remain inadequate, and gender pay gaps persist, it is hardly surprising that the economic consequences of divorce fall more heavily on women. This is precisely why the social state principle requires the protection of those in economically vulnerable positions.
The question today is not merely how long alimony should last, but why women continue to require economic protection after divorce.
If the state has not developed adequate social policies to prevent women’s impoverishment after divorce; if care responsibilities have not been effectively socialised; if accessible childcare and care services remain insufficient; if women’s employment has not been meaningfully strengthened; and if economic inequalities persist, how can weakening existing legal protections be reconciled with the obligations of a social state?
This is the question that should be at the centre of the current debate.
Because the purpose of the social state is not to ignore inequalities, but to reduce the harms they produce.
Equality Is a Substantive, Not Merely Formal, Principle
The equality principle guaranteed under Article 10 of the Constitution does not mean that everyone must always be treated identically.
True equality requires recognising that people in different circumstances have different needs.
For this reason, taking account of the historical and structural economic disadvantages faced by women is not contrary to equality. On the contrary, it is a requirement of equality itself.
Much of the contemporary debate on alimony relies on a formal understanding of equality that renders economic inequalities between women and men invisible. Yet the law must respond not only to abstract norms but also to social realities.
And social reality continues to show that the risk of poverty after divorce remains a systematic challenge for women.
Conclusion
A society in which women no longer need alimony is undoubtedly a goal that many would share. But building such a society is not the same thing as restricting women’s existing right to alimony.
The first strengthens equality. The second risk intensifies the consequences of existing inequalities.
For years, public discussions have framed alimony primarily as a question of obligation. In reality, however, it is fundamentally a question of equality.
In a society where women continue to bear a disproportionate share of unpaid care work, face structural barriers to economic independence, and experience a greater risk of poverty after divorce, weakening alimony rights cannot be viewed as a merely technical reform of family law.
It is also a choice about the meaning of the social state, substantive equality, and women’s economic rights.
The issue we should be debating today is therefore not simply the duration of alimony. It is why women continue to become impoverished after divorce, and whether the social state is effectively addressing that reality.
Alimony is not a privilege. It is a legal safeguard designed to mitigate the consequences of inequality. Until those inequalities disappear, questioning that safeguard risks reducing not women’s poverty, but merely its visibility.