Honour killings in Turkey: An unEuropean habit

Date: 28/06/03

Turkey needs to stop the practice of “honour killings”

SEMSE ALLAK, a pregnant woman, and Halil, her illicit lover (or rapist - no one quite knows), were stoned to death last November in the south-eastern province of Mardin by their relatives for shaming their families. Halil died on the spot, while Semse survived the hail of stones, only to die this month from her injuries. Her family refused to collect her corpse, for it was too “tainted”. It was left to the authorities in Diyarbakir, a nearby province where she was taken to hospital, and a valiant women's rights group called KA-MER, which has been struggling to make people more aware of these so-called honour crimes, to arrange Semse's burial.

Honour killings - or, rather, the fact that they are still tolerated by a sizeable chunk of Turkish society - are just the sort of thing that makes western Europeans think Turkey is unsuited to join the European Union. That is why, among a clutch of reforms tailored to bring the country closer to European norms and approved in parliament last week, there was a proposal to scrap an article of the penal code that allows reduced sentences for those who perpetrate crimes of honour.

But that might not be enough. The catch, says Nicole Pope, a Swiss expert in Istanbul, is that in most cases defendants are tried under the code's article 51, which allows for “extenuating circumstances” if murders are committed under “extreme provocation”. Many judges are social conservatives who interpret those words in a way that results in honour killers being punished lightly. Moreover, families who want to “cleanse their honour” often get minors to do the killing - and they get off still more lightly.

Probably scores of Turkish women are murdered every year for offences against “virtue”, including even going to the cinema with a man who is not their husband. And many such cases go unreported.