The plight of ‘child brides’ in Turkey will be told in a documentary, ‘Play House’, by director Bingol Elmas. The playwright wants to raise awareness on the atrocity of forced and early marriages for young girls,. She describes her aim to DIHA news agency as one of social justice and change.

One of many human rights challenges facing women in Turkey is being forced into marriage at a very early age. Families force their daughters into marriage after bringing them up believing that subservience and obedience are required values. Elmas is taking the pulse of these issues with ‘Play House.

The movie has begun shooting in Hakkari where the problem is not unfamiliar to its people.

Elmas explains the journey of the movie: “Forced marriage at an early age is very common in this area. But I do not mean that there is no problem such in other regions. This is also very common –not as much as in Hakkari- in these other regions. The people hesitate to speak on the camera to discuss this case. Marriage is a very delicate topic for them to speak about publicly. That is why we have a very hard time to encourage them to speak. But there is still a lot of material for this movie. We also shot some part of the movie in Kurdish.”

Two other movies deal with the crisis of child brides in Turkey. They had been shot by “Flying Broom”, a feminist group and “TESEV” a foundation to search social movements in Turkey.

Bingol has made three previous documentary movies, “Ant of August”, “Trans Asya” and “A letter to Pippa”. Pippa Bacca was an Italian artist who was raped and killed in Turkey while she was engaged in an artistic and original peace tour.