Ethnographics Gallery University of Kent

Turkish Village

Copyright 1965, 1994 Paul Stirling. All rights reserved.

Paul Stirling
CHAPTER SIX

HOUSEHOLD AND FAMILY STRUCTURE

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Page 104


brother or sister, or a son of his wife's brother or ster, and bring him up as his own son, and heir to his land. I knew of only one case of this kind in Sakaltutan. Haci Osman (H) had taken on an orphan child of his sister, who was also his father's brother's son's son's son (agnatic second cousin once removed). The villagers did not regard this young man as Haci Osman's heir, but he himself told me that contrary to village custom and Islamic law, he had formally adopted the boy under the Turkish Civil Code; the young man died while we were in the village, but he left a little son, who was, according to Haci Osman, heir to his not inconsiderable estate.

In Elbashï, a fairly well landed man had adopted a brother's son as his heir, and married him to his only daughter. I gathered that this young man had, in village eyes, lost his rights in his own father's home, although according to the Seriat, he had not, and although no modern legal arrangements had been made. In another case, a young man had been adopted by his father's brother, and had actually inherited his adopting father's house and fields and set up his own family there.

Where a man voluntarily takes a boy to be his heir, the relationship will plainly be as like a full father-son relationship as the two can make it. But the society does not recognise social as distinct from physiological fatherhood, and the equivalence would never therefore be complete. They would not use the terms `father' and `son' to each other.

Orphan children are common in this as in any society with a high death rate. Men often therefore have children in their household who are not their own. In the past, dead brothers' children seem normally to have been treated as servants and to have lost their share of their grandfather's estate, which was divided between their fathers' brothers, in accordance with the Seriat (Vesey-Fitzgerald (1931) p 121). Now their right to their dead fathers' land is generally admitted. Stepchildren and other orphans normally separate from their foster father's home as early as possible, and claim their father's land. Such separations are not a sign of strained relations. In Elbashï, two households had taken in refugees who came to the village from the east of Turkey, as husbands to their daughters. In no other cases did I hear of a man actually living under the authority of his father-in-law, but these two men came to the village with

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