Yet if he were young again, said Arslan, a sprightly, potbellied, 64-year-old Kurdish village chieftain, he would happily trade in his five wives for one.
"Marrying five wives is not sinful, and I did so because to have many wives is a sign of power," he said, perched on a divan in a large cushion-filled room at his house, where a portrait of Turkey's first president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who outlawed polygamy in 1926, is prominently displayed.
"But I wouldn't do it again," he added, listing the challenges of having so many kin - like the need to build each wife a house away from the others to prevent friction and his struggle to remember all of his children's names. "I was uneducated back then, and God commands us to be fruitful and multiply."
Banned by Ataturk as part of an effort to modernize the Turkish republic and empower women, polygamy remains widespread in this deeply religious and rural Kurdish region of southeastern Anatolia, home to one-third of Turkey's 71 million people. The practice is generally accepted under the Quran.
Polygamy is creating cultural clashes in a country struggling to reconcile the secularism of the republic with its Muslim traditions. It also risks undermining Turkey's drive to gain entry into the European Union.
"The EU is looking for any excuse not to let Turkey in, and polygamy reinforces the stereotype of Turkey as a backward country," said Handan Coskun, director of a women's center.
Because polygamous marriages are not recognized by the state - imams who conduct them are subject to punishment - the wives have no legal status, making them vulnerable when marriages turn violent. Yet the local authorities typically turn a blind eye because the practice is viewed as a tradition.
Two years ago, Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan tried to attack polygamy by criminalizing adultery, after prominent members of his Justice and Development Party were rumored to have taken second wives. But even though it condemns polygamy, the European Union criticized him for intervening in the nation's bedrooms, leading him to back down.
In Turkey, polygamy experts explain the practice as a hangover from the Ottoman period, when harem culture abounded and having several wives was viewed as a symbol of influence, sexual prowess and wealth.
Remzi Otto, a sociology professor at Dicle University in Diyarbakir, who conducted a survey of 50 polygamous families, said some men took second wives if their first wives could not conceive sons. Some also take widowed women and orphan girls as second wives to give them a social safety net. Love, he added, also can play a role.
"Many men in this region are forced into marriages when they are as young as 13, so finding their own wife is a way to rebel and express their independence," he said.
Isiklar, the remote village where Arslan is the aga, or chief, can be found at the end of a long dirt road, surrounded by sweeping, verdant fields. Most of the locals share the surname Arslan, which means lion in Turkish and connotes virility.
Arslan said he regretted his multiple marriages and had forbidden his sons to take more than one wife. He also is educating his daughters.
Religious leaders in the region are beginning to question polygamy. On a recent day at the Ulu Mosque in Diyarbakir, a group of Islamic scholars washed their feet as they debated the merits of a second marriage.
Imam Camisab Ozbek said Islam permitted a man to take up to four wives, but only on the condition that each wife had her own property, assets and dowry.
He said some local polygamous men were distorting the Quran's teachings.
"If a husband takes a second wife and doesn't behave equally toward her, when he dies he will be handicapped in the hereafter and go to hell," he said.
