“Honor killings” continue to make the news on a regular basis as the West becomes more aware – and intolerant – of the horrifying custom. Countries like Turkey, looking to join the EU, are overhauling their criminal codes to combat these tragic deaths.
Four years ago, a sustained campaign by Women For Women’s Rights led to the overhaul of Turkey’s civil code.
“It is now completely equal for men and women,” (Mujde) Bilgutay ( co-ordinator of the penal-code reform campaign for 26 non-governmental organizations) says.
Two years ago, she and others began studying the penal code. Article by article, they identified areas prejudicial to women, checked them against European law and proposed the amendments now before the justice subcommittee.
Partly as a result of the process, the government last year abolished Article 462, which had given judges discretion to reduce a murder sentence in honour killings by as much as 80 per cent.
But other articles still allow such killers to get off lightly, Bilgutay says.
“The ‘unjust provocation’ article is one. It says that if you suddenly do something bad to me and I react with rage and kill you, I get a reduced sentence because you were unjustly provoking me.
“In honour killings, men are getting reduced sentences by arguing, ‘I saw my daughter with a boy in front of the cinema, so I was really shocked and provoked, and I killed her.’ In fact, most honour killings are premeditated.”
Another article grants light sentences to young offenders, thus motivating families to assign the murder to a teenager or boy.
Even so, “honor killings” are believed to be on the rise in Turkey as rural Kurds immigrate to the cities where their daughters, previously sheltered from objectionable lifestyles, are now exposed to situations which their parents believe justify their deaths. As recently as May 1, a 14-year-old girl was buried after her father strangled her with a wire, his idea of expiating the “dishonor” brought to his family when his daughter was kidnapped and raped. (The girl’s father, brother and uncle – who committed the murder at the behest of a family council – have been charged with her death and were released pending their trial.)
The increase in honor killings isn’t limited to the Middle East. In Rochester, New York last month, a Turkish immigrant was charged with killing his wife and fracturing the skulls of his 4- and 22-year-old daughters in an “honor killing” after learning that his own brother had molested his wife and oldest child. He has pled not guilty, explaining to investigators that it was an “honor killing.”
Slow as it is, progress is still occuring. Pakistan’s President Musharraf has called for a ban on honor killings, despite the practice being outlawed already. Hundreds of such murders are believed to occur in Pakistan each year.
But the tide may be turning, as not only the Pakistani ban but similar legislation in Jordan seems to indicate. Much of it is due to women who are willing to speak out and demand an end to this ancient form of victimization. Recently, a woman known only as Souad published what is believed to be the first book by a survivor of a failed honor killing. The book, Burned Alive: A Victim of the Law of Men, is receiving worldwide attention from human rights groups due to its powerful look into a practice so poorly documented in the press.
Certainly when it comes to the subject of honor killings, there is no such thing as ignorance being bliss – for the victims, or for the rest of us.
Tuesday, May 18th, 2004, 11:31 am | 
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May 18, 2004 at 12:37 pm
You’re awesome for posting this–thanks for linking to the book.
May 18, 2004 at 12:46 pm
Sharleen, honor killings are something I’ve been following for a while, because it’s the only way I know how to deal with the rage they provoke in me.
May 18, 2004 at 1:16 pm
Understood–and posting about it is important. On the other side of the coin, Islamic feminists have been writing about this and speaking out about it for some time–critique from the outside coupled with critique from within is crucial to addressing the issue. I’ve seen some of your other posts about this topic and am always interested in the links you provide.
May 18, 2004 at 2:08 pm
That’s horrible! I don’t understand. Thanks for enligtening me and I am going to link to your article right now!
May 18, 2004 at 5:21 pm
i met a jordanian princess today. she’s a bit of a feminist too. as feminist as you can be in the middle east. don’t know how she is working against honor killings but you can bet she is. and yeah, it shocks me too.
May 19, 2004 at 1:28 am
It amazes me that this kind of thinking actually happens in any of today’s societies. I can’t imagine what it must be like to suffer through this.
May 19, 2004 at 5:16 am
I always find it difficult to impress upon other societies our values and beliefs, but this is truly barbarism. I saw the 60 Minutes piece as well, and thought one gentleman summed it up accurately when Ed asked him if we have the right to impress our values upon other societies. His reply was
May 19, 2004 at 9:34 am
Western universities are training an army of feminists in their university women’s studies departments. It is past time to put that army to good use. Send them to the places where women and girls are being slaughtered, let this army earn its keep. Or did they think they could rest on their mothers’ laurels, taking sinecured positions in countries where the battle is as good as won?
May 19, 2004 at 10:41 am
Muphibious–good point. There has often been tension between Muslim feminists/Third World or subaltern feminisms and Western (particularly second wave) feminists. Part of the issue is that the concerns are just different; part of the issue is that to some of us living in the U.S., it’s too easy to let it be someone else’s problem.
The question of universal values is interesting–some folks in cultural studies (long criticized by the Right for “moral relativism”) are starting to assert that there are indeed universals–one of them being women’s rights. (The question of what comprises “women’s rights” remains hotly contested.)
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