Divorce demography

Fewer people in Turkey got married and divorced in 2020 compared to the previous year, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) said on Feb. 25.

"The number of people who got married was 542,314 in 2019. It was 487,270 in 2020, a 10.1 percent decrease [since the year before]," TÜİK said in its latest statistics on marriage and divorce rates.

The number of couples who got married in Turkey decreased by 2.9 percent in 2018 compared to the previous year, while the number of those who divorced increased by 10.9 percent since 2017, according to data released by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) on March 1. 

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is hoping to stem Turkey's rising tide of divorces, as the new government's first action since retaining its parliamentary majority in the Nov. 1 general election.