Nargiza Unal met her husband, Adnan, 13 years ago when she was working in Turkey on a temporary visa with the hope of making money and returning to her home country, Uzbekistan.
Nargiza's plans changed, and she stayed in Istanbul when Adnan proposed to her shortly after they had met.
Nargiza recalls Adnan telling her he wasn't rich and couldn't make unrealistic promises to her. But he said he was determined to build a stable family and become a supportive husband.
"I trusted him…[and] I knew this man would never leave me or betray me," Nargiza said. "But his relatives thought I was marrying him just for Turkish citizenship. They would tell my husband that 'you are much older than her, you're poor, your wife will leave you as soon as she gets a Turkish passport.'"
Thirteen years later, the couple's marriage is still strong and their financial situation has greatly improved, Nargiza says. The family has since bought its own home in Istanbul, where they live with their three children.
Marriages between Uzbek women and Turkish men are definitely on the rise, according to official Turkish figures. Government statistics for 2022 show that Uzbek women were the second-largest number of foreign brides in Turkey, after Syrians. Uzbek women counted for more than 11 percent of the 28,571 foreign brides who married Turkish men in 2022.
A Good Match?
The language barrier is not impossible, considering that Uzbek and Turkish belong to the same language family. Both groups are predominantly Sunni Muslims and share similar family and community values.
Many Uzbek-Turkish couples say they married for love, while some Uzbek women admit they enter such unions with the hope of staying in Turkey for its better economic opportunities. With low wages and chronic unemployment in Uzbekistan, marrying a Turkish man is seen by many women as a ticket out of poverty.
But not all of the marriages have worked out as well as Nargiz and Adnan's.
In the past two years, the Istanbul-based Uzbek Women's Rights Association has provided legal, psychological, and financial assistance to more than 3,500 Uzbek women who encountered problems after marrying in Turkey, according to its head, Ozoda Islomova.
There were many cases involving Uzbek women who married Turkish men in a hurry "after meeting them online or being introduced by mutual acquaintances" without doing a background check or getting to know them properly, Islomova told RFE/RL.
"It takes time, but some people seem to have no patience, or they just don't want to wait," Islomova said.
'Virgins From Ferghana'
One of the women who sought help from the association was a 20-year-old Uzbek who married a Turkish man introduced to her by her neighbor in Uzbekistan. Islomova said the young woman was promised "a beautiful family life in Turkey."
"But in reality, she was taken by her new husband to his home in a remote village, where she would look after livestock and work on a farm," Islomova said. "We were able to help her through the Turkish law enforcement agencies."
But it's not only Uzbek women that have fallen victim to false promises.
A Turkish television channel recently aired a program about several Turkish men who allegedly paid thousands of dollars to fraudsters who promised them reliable brides from Uzbekistan.
The men -- from the Afyonkarahisar, Burdur, Denizli, and Isparta provinces -- told STAR TV that they paid between $3,000 and $12,000 to a marriage agency in exchange for a bride.
The two women who run the agency -- identified by the TV channel as Rabiya Gekce and Barno Celik -- allegedly told the men that their future brides were "virgins" from Ferghana, a religiously conservative province in eastern Uzbekistan.
The men told the TV program that the Uzbek "brides" brought by Gekce and Celik vanished from their new homes within several weeks, taking jewelry and other gifts their grooms had given them.
The program said hundreds of Turkish men had seemingly fallen victim to a scam. The channel showed the two alleged fraudsters being arrested by police.
RFE/RL cannot independently confirm the claims.
Marriage Doesn't Mean A Passport
Yulduz Uzunaslan runs the Yildiz Permit law firm in Istanbul, which provides legal advice to Uzbeks in Turkey. Among her clients are Uzbek women planning to marry Turkish men.
Uzunaslan, an Uzbek who married her Turkish husband 18 years ago, says some of her Uzbek clients falsely believe that marrying a Turk guarantees them "Turkish citizenship in three years."
"That's incorrect. After officially marrying a Turkish citizen, the foreigner gets a one-year spousal residency permit that will then be extended for another two years," she explained. "Turkish police -- without informing the couple -- make inquiries to determine whether it is a genuine marriage…or a fake union for immigration purposes."
According to Uzunaslan, "once it was easier" for Uzbeks to get Turkish passports through a fake marriage, but "it has now become practically impossible" amid the strict police checks.
