Turkey: Marriages down, divorces up in 2019

By Tuba Sahin

ANKARA (AA) - Fewer people in Turkey got married in 2019 while more got divorced compared to the previous year, said the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) on Wednesday.

"The number of couples who got married was 554,389 in 2018, [versus] 541,424 in 2019, decreasing 2.3%," TurkStat said in a statement.

The crude marriage rate – the number of marriages per thousand population – was 0.656% in 2019, down from 0.681% in 2018.

A total of 155,047 couples got divorced last year, climbing 8% year-on-year, the institute noted.

"Crude divorce rate expressing the number of divorces per thousand population was 1.88 per thousand in 2019," it added.

The mean age at first marriage rose for both women and men, reaching 25 and 27.9, respectively, up from 24.8 for women and 27.8 for men.

TurkStat also gave data on the proportion of marriage with foreign partners of total marriages, saying the proportion of foreign brides rose, while it fell for grooms.

"The number of foreign brides was 23,264 in 2019, 4.3% of total brides," it said.

Syrian women topped the foreign brides with 14.5%, followed by Azerbaijani brides with 11.7% and German brides with 10.5%.

"On the other hand, the number of foreign grooms was 4,580 in 2019, 0.8% of total grooms," it noted.