Bridal gown or a shroud?

SOAP OPERA>> Child Brides • Turkey

 
Published: Thursday 15 December 2011

A 15-year-old girl in a bridal veil lifts a tear-stained face to the camera. “My name is Hayat,” she tells the audience. “My husband is 70 years old.” A white-bearded man steps into the frame and she dissolves into tears. “This dress is not my bridal gown.

It is my shroud,” she sobs. One in two women in Turkey is married off as a teenager, a speaker announces from off-screen. The two-minute film clip is the trailer of a soap opera by Mahsun Kirmizigul, a popular singer turned director, which debuted in the second week of November on Turkish TV. The series, Life Goes On, will follow the life of Hayat’s family as they flee poverty in Anatolia and attempt to find their feet in Istanbul.

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