Parallel brides: for some families in Turkey, matchmaking is an intricate dance

Natural History, May, 2002 by Mustafa Turker Ersen

It is a bright Sunday in the tiny Arab village of Lower Arbit in southeastern Turkey. Cheerful melodies issue from a cassette player powered by a tractor battery. I watch as Nuri and Turkan, brother and sister, join the snaking line of the halay dance in front of their house, over which flies a Turkish flag. Meanwhile, a few miles away, in the village of Mengalan, a similar scene must be unfolding for Mehmet and Feride, who are also brother and sister. All four are to be wed today: Nuri to Feride, and Mehmet to Turkan.

Such a double wedding is known as a berdel, which in Kurdish means "in place of the one." In stead of paying the required bride-price to another family so that his son may have a bride, a father arranges to offer a bride from his own family in compensation. In Nuri's and Mehmet's cases, both fathers have a daughter of their own to offer, but if they didn't, they might have drawn upon a niece or other eligible female in the extended family. Whatever the arrangement, the actual exchange of brides is the most critical part of the process--as tricky as dropping off a ransom payment in return for a kidnap victim.

Around noontime, two dust clouds appear on the horizon, both heading toward the designated rendezvous point midway between the two villages. The cars carrying the brides are approaching. Timing, as well as having an equal number of attendees, is crucial; the possibility that some slipup will cause one of the parties to cancel the deal inevitably creates a stressful atmosphere. There is only one way to overcome the tension--to be quick. The vehicles park side by side, the brides are hastily exchanged, and the cars head home to the waiting grooms. In both villages the women shout and pray when the bride arrives at her new home; that same day, an imam joins the couple in matrimony.

On maps of Turkey, the zone where Lower Arbit is located appears empty of inhabitants; it is a "government productivity farm," off-limits to settlement. Nevertheless, a few tiny villages cling to the rocky terrain. Electricity, schools, and other facilities are lacking, and the village residents, forbidden to grow crops on government property, must depend for their livelihood on herding sheep and other livestock. In this setting, where raising enough money for a bride-price can be difficult, a berdel can have practical advantages. But it is much more than an economic convenience. According to Serpil Altuntek, an anthropologist at Hacettepe University in Ankara, "Berdel, cousin marriage, and similar arrangements are better viewed as part of a family's strategy to forge and maintain favorable political and economic alliances." The choice of spouse also contributes to the solidarity of the encompassing kin groups--lineage, clan, and tribe--which are the backbone of social life.

Berdel marriage is found primarily among Kurdish, Arabic, and Turkic peoples in what is now southern and southeastern Turkey. Altuntek points out that before the establishment of the Turkish republic in 1923, when new borders were drawn with Syria, Iraq, and other neighboring countries, these groups led a pastoral life that involved nomadic movements and social ties over a much wider region. Under the new national arrangements, most of the people who remained within Turkey's borders were obliged to take up a sedentary way of life, and many of their ties with distant allies were weakened or severed. "Nowadays," says Altuntek, "berdel and other close-kin marriages function as a means to re-create strong group ties." (Haci Halef Varli, a villager in Lower Arbit, tells me about his experience in the 1960s: It had been arranged for him to marry his mother's brother's daughter, who had emigrated to Syria. "We smuggled the brides over the border, to the east of Ceylanpinar," he recalls.)

The tradition of berdel crosses not only ethnic lines but also the urban-rural divide. When Ahmet Borek got married recently in the city of Sanliurfa, sixty miles west of Lower Arbit, his sister married his wife's brother. "Through a berdel deal," I ask, "you had to marry a girl you only saw once before the wedding. Are you happy?" The twenty-three-year-old groom doesn't hesitate for a moment: "Yes," he answers. "I saw her. I liked her. In the old days, you did not even have the chance to see her." Ahmet also observes that he had no realistic opportunity "to meet someone in a pastry shop," and adds, "If I had not accepted, my father would not have forced me to."

A go-between helped Ahmet Borek's family arrange the deal with a family from another clan, but this is not typical in berdel exchanges. Usually marriages are arranged within a clan, and the right to ask for a young woman as a bride traditionally goes first to the son of a brother of her father and then to the sons of other close relatives. Thus, the families are relieved of the burden of choosing. Pairings are sometimes made in childhood, so everybody knows who will be marrying whom. In any case, the elders have the final word.