http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/updates/lat_honor000910.htm Sunday, September 10, 2000 In Modern Turkey, Women Continue to Pay the Price for Honor Rights: For some families, the only way to restore a reputation that they believe has been tarnished by a female relative is to kill her.
By AMBERIN ZAMAN, Special To The Times
SANLIURFA, Turkey--Her first name means "saint" in Turkish, but in the eyes of her family, Azize Tumbul was anything but that.
The 14-year-old daughter of a Kurdish farmer admitted having sex with her neighbor's son. Never mind that he had raped her. She had stained the family honor. In this largely Kurdish province in Turkey's arid southeast, the only way to erase that stain was with Azize's blood. Two of her brothers took her to an irrigation canal, threw her in and left her for dead.
Azize's story isn't uncommon in Turkey. Experts say that "honor killings" claim dozens of women each year in this predominantly Muslim country.
But what makes the crime shocking is that women in Turkey, unlike in other Muslim countries where honor killings occur, theoretically enjoy the same rights as Western women.
In a drive to Westernize his nation nearly 80 years ago, Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, bid women to cast off their veils and declared them equal. In the 1930s, a law granted them the right to vote. Polygamy was abolished along with religious wedding ceremonies. Equality of inheritance was accepted as well as a woman's testimony before a court of law.
Today, such Turkish provinces as Istanbul and Izmir are bustling with professional women practically indistinguishable from their counterparts in Los Angeles or London.
"They live with their boyfriends, they go to bars, and nobody bats an eyelid," says Halime Guner, who heads a women's rights group called Flying Broom that is based in Ankara, the capital.
As Turkey makes its bid to join the European Union after becoming a candidate for membership last year, the government is preparing legislation that would abolish the commonplace practice of reducing penalties for honor killings.
The government has already scrapped laws that say the man is the head of the family and banned arbitrary virginity tests at state hospitals. And it has also launched a multibillion-dollar development plan that would help boost literacy and employment among women in the Kurdish-populated regions.
'A Virtue That Only a Man Can Possess'
In Turkey, honor crimes are most common in poor regions such as the Kurdish-dominated eastern and southeastern provinces, where tribal structures remain intact and illiteracy is widespread.
What is honor? "It is a virtue that only a man can possess and that can only be soiled by a female body," says Vildan Yirmbesoglu, a Turkish lawyer who campaigns against honor crimes. "It is a notion that was concocted by men to ensure their continued domination over tribe and society long before Islam was ever introduced."
Sanliurfa, a sunbaked city of 500,000 people about 40 miles north of the Syrian border, is notorious for the frequency of such crimes, and none quite so chilling perhaps as that of Hacer Felhan.
The teenager's throat was slit in the town square in broad daylight by her 11-year-old brother because someone dedicated a love ballad to her over the radio. The girl was a virgin and didn't have a boyfriend.
Then there was 12-year-old Hatice. Her throat was cut by her 17-year-old husband because she had gone to the movies without his permission.
Adultery, elopement, even rumors of unchaste behavior are common reasons for such killings.
"You can be sure that most are hushed up or reported as accidents, so we will never know the full extent of this continuing butchery," Yirmbesoglu says.
What sets Azize Tumbul apart from her fellow victims is that she lived to tell her tale.
After being dragged by the current for nearly a mile, Azize managed to grab a metal pole protruding from the side of the canal. Villagers overheard her cries and hauled her out of the water. Azize walked to the nearest police station and filed a complaint against her brothers.
A police investigation determined that the brothers, both adults, had shot the 19-year-old neighbor to death on a street in Sanliurfa a day before trying to kill Azize.
They are in jail and on trial, along with nine other family members implicated in both crimes. Azize, pregnant with the 19-year-old's child, was spirited to a state-run shelter at an undisclosed location, where she is to remain under protection until she's 18.
Under Turkish law, killing a blood relative is a crime punishable by death. Yet those who commit honor killings nearly always get off with a light prison sentence because judges regard the "provocation" as a mitigating circumstance.
The average prison term of such convicts is six years. Some families order minors to carry out honor killings because their age is a further mitigating factor. They are usually freed after two years in prison.
"There is huge social pressure on our judges to lessen the sentences," says Sabri Cepik, who chairs the Sanliurfa Bar Assn. "In the eyes of the people, the murderer is merely carrying out his duty. He too is a victim, because he has no other choice but to do as he's told."
In a dilapidated farmhouse about 10 miles south of Sanliurfa, Azize's mother, Ferdi Tumbul, shows little compassion for her daughter, claiming that the girl fell into the water "accidentally."
"That stupid child shamed our entire family," she says, her pale green eyes flashing with rage. "We could not show our faces to the neighbors, not even to the shopkeepers, and now all our men are in jail."
"We must find her, not to harm her, but to make her change her testimony," the mother adds.
But Ferda Gulluoglu, a women's rights activist here, says, "If they find her, more likely they will finish the job."
It is not unusual for mothers and other female relatives to act as willing accomplices in honor killings.
"A stained reputation means that other unmarried girls in the family will never find suitors until it is cleansed," Gulluoglu says. "If a woman has no skills, no education, her honor is her only currency in the marriage market."
Even death isn't enough to remove the stigma attached to unchaste behavior.
Disowned by their families, victims of honor killings are often buried in paupers' graves.
"For us, such girls are no different from dogs--they are dirt," says Mehmet Gucsuz, a spice merchant in the city center, spitting noisily to reinforce his point.
Senay Eser, a senior government official involved in the development project, acknowledges that laws can do little to deter honor killings in the impoverished southeast "until the hold of the tribes is broken."
For now, there are few signs that Turkey's politicians want to challenge the tribal structure of the Kurdish region. Good relations with its leader can secure the votes of an entire tribe. Many lawmakers elected from the Kurdish provinces are tribal leaders themselves.
"Criticizing honor crimes would be political suicide for these people," says Hashim Hashimi, a Kurdish lawmaker from the southeastern province of Diyarbakir. "They would be regarded as wimps."
Girls Often Seen as Commercial Assets
There is also a ruthlessly material aspect to honor killings. In provinces such as Sanliurfa, an aspiring groom has to pay so-called head money to his intended's family before he can wed her. When a girl is dishonored, the family forfeits that income.
"It is true that we view our girls as commercial assets, to be traded or sold," says Mahmut Ozyavuzlar, an ethnic Arab clan leader in the largely Arab-populated town of Harran, 30 miles south of Sanliurfa.
Pointing to an old bearded man reclining against a pile of kilim cushions, Ozyavuzlar says: "Look, Haci Fuat here wants 8 billion liras [$12,000] for his girl."
Depending on their looks and wealth, some girls can fetch as much as $50,000.
Government efforts to abolish head money have failed to make an impact. Newspapers here brim with tear-jerking accounts of young lovers who elope and get killed after being hunted down by their relatives. In most cases, the boy could not come up with the sum demanded by the girl's family.
Turkish dailies last month carried the story of a girl, 15, who committed suicide in the eastern province of Van after being married off to a 45-year-old man who had 11 children and multiple wives. A recent study in the eastern province of Mus revealed that 28 girls had killed themselves over the past six months after being forced into similar marriages.
"Better perhaps they kill themselves than run away and dishonor their families," Ozyavuzlar says. "Otherwise, it would fall upon the family to erase the stain."