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NEWS & LETTERS,
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2003
Our Life and Times by Kevin A. Barry
Turkish murders
More than 5,000 women worldwide are murdered by their
family members in “honor killings” every year. In Turkey, protests by
women’s rights organizations as well as the requirements of membership in the
European Union, have recently forced the Turkish parliament to approve a human
rights law that puts an end to lenient sentences for murders in the name of
“family honor.” For years, men and occasionally women who killed a woman
family member could invoke Article 462 of the Turkish criminal code that reduced
their sentence by 80%. The recent case of Cemse Allak in the Kurdish city of
Diyarbakir attracted much attention because she lay semi-conscious with a
crushed skull after her brother stoned her and the man who had raped her. During
the seven months she lay in a hospital bed, her family members refused to visit
her. Only members of a Diyarbakir women’s organization, Kamer, visited her.
Even when her death was announced, her family members refused to claim her body.
Kamer members saw to it that she had a coffin. They flouted religious tradition
by carrying the coffin into the municipal cemetery themselves. --Sheila Sahar |
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