More than one in five marriages in Iran ended in divorce last year — despite the government’s push for more couples to wed and have children to reverse slowing population growth. The annual figures published Tuesday also showed fewer people were getting married and the statistics coincide with rising concern about family breakdown in the Islamic republic. In measures aimed at addressing an ageing population, Iran’s parliament is discussing a bill that would ban vasectomies and tighten the nation’s abortion laws. Research carried out in the past year in Turkey has revealed that nearly one in five married people get divorced, a fact which might be due to the late marriages that usually come with life in cities, relationships that are lived freely over social media and to prominent examples of bad marriages.
Thailand divorce rate is up also. The Thailand Ministry of Public Health revealed that the divorce rate has risen 27 percent over the past nine years in Thailand, showing the fragile state of marriages in recent years. The increase in divorces was due to more couples experiencing work-related stress while “the value of independence” made them less tolerant of each other, said ministry spokeswoman Panpimol Wipulakorn.
Based on the data provided by the Turkish Statistics Institute 120,117 couples got divorced in 2011, while the figure rose to 123,325 in 2012 and to 125,305 last year. Divorce is most common in the Aegean region, while the rate of divorce is lowest in central and eastern Anatolia. Among provinces, with 27,000 divorces last year, İstanbul comes out as the province where the number of divorces is highest.
