The divorce phenomrnon as the process of family disintegration and religion: A sociological approach (The case of Kilis)

In today's world which witnesses rapid socio-cultural changes, family is one of the primary institutions which is affected by these changes. One of the most negative and increasing results of these changes on family is divorce. While modern processes such as immigration, increased by industrialization, urbanization, changes in values, individualization, changes in the criteria of spouse selection, delays or decreases in marriage due to women's increasing participation in labor market, low pregnancy rates and the transformation of private life pave the way for secularism; dissolutions and divorces have begun in families together with religiosity and the pious entering into a period of recession and transformation due to secularization and therefore divorce as a recently increasing social problem has drawn scholarly attention to this field. In this study, socio-religious reasons and results of divorces are investigated in the province of Kilis with 1.22 raw divorce rate (TSE, 2014, s. 3) according to the TUIK, which is close to the national average and above the regional. This is the first case study investigating Kilis in terms of this subject. The data of the research are obtained by conducting in-depth interviews with 36 divorced participants and the results are interpreted by comparing them with the data from other investigations. The field research started in June 2016 and ended in December 2016. The study consists of two parts and an introduction. In the introduction, the topic and the problem, as well as aims, rationale and relevant literature and the methodology of the research are presented. In the first chapter, marriage, family and divorce, the relationship between the social change/dissolution and religion are discussed conceptually and theoretically and in the second chapter the findings of the field research are evaluated. According to the findings of the study, it is observed that in a group of marriages which ended in divorce there are disapproval of the marriage by the families and their excessive intervention, influential but not noticed at the early stages of the marriage and emerging only in the later stages. In some marriages, however, there are other problems: betrayal or cheating by one of the spouses, drug addiction, addiction of alcohol and gambling, backbiting, wrong spouse choice, discrepancy and nonsatisfaction among spouses, irresponsibility, disobedience of women, socio-cultural structural differences between spouses, being too dependent on one's own family or having weak personality/lack of self-confidence, economic and class differences, jealousy of the mother towards her son, lies-cheats and frauds, not meeting the expectations of mediators, domestic abuse and domestic violence. However, apart from all of these, most of the couples state as the main reason of divorce as severe conflict according to court results of the divorce cases.