In the Name of Honor
Human Rights Dialogue 2.10 (Fall 2003): "Violence Against Women"
Leylâ Pervizat
“You, women, stand side by side and finish this practice. This is
not the first one. It will not be the last one. Allah will not forgive
this; neither will the Prophet. Our hearts are aching with sadness.”
These words were spoken to me by a graveyard keeper as I was leaving the
Diyarbakýr Cemetery for the Destitute and without Family after
visiting the burial site of Semse Allak last June. Semse was stoned by
male family members in late November of 2002 in Mardin, Turkey. After
spending seven months in a coma, she died in June 2003. Her body was buried
by a large group of women activists in an unusual religious ceremony.
According to the practices of Islam in Turkey, women are not allowed to
conduct the religious burial prayer—they may only stand on the sidelines
and watch. However, in this case, women performed the service for Semse,
a first in our memory.
Semse was a victim of so-called honor killings. Honor killings—one
of the most horrendous violations of women’s human rights and a
form of extrajudicial execution—target individuals who believe,
or are perceived to believe, in values and standards that are at odds
with the social norms of their society. Although they are a most severe
form of violence, honor killings are not the only type of violence faced
by women in Turkey. Women are also subject to abuses such as marital rape,
female genital mutilation, nose cutting, bride price, forced marriages,
polygamy, and forced virginity testing. To make matters worse, the state
fails to recognize its duties and responsibilities in eradicating these
forms of violence, and legitimizes them by deeming them “family
problems” or “domestic situations.”
Soon after Semse’s burial, our project team of KA-MER, an independent
women’s organization in Diyarbakýr, held its first open meeting,
inviting representatives from the government, judiciary, media, police
force, health groups, the community, and other NGOs to discuss ways of
eradicating honor killings. As a women’s rights activist and a feminist
researcher, I am working with KA-MER to prevent honor killings in southeastern
and eastern Turkey. We take a broad approach by trying to address the
problem before the execution occurs, in addition to dealing with killings
after they happen. We work both on the community level and with government
officials to create awareness and eventually to eradicate this practice.
Unfortunately, Semse was stoned before KA-MER heard about the danger she
was in and could intervene. Her case received worldwide public attention,
partly because stoning—as opposed to shooting or stabbing—a
woman or man in the name of honor is very rare in Turkey. Religious leaders’
attitude toward honor killings is very clear: they denounce the practice.
Similarly, activists working on the issue have never cited imams, the
Qur’an, or Islam as sources of the problem in Turkey. This point
was made clear to me when, during my visit in Urfa, one of the most religious
and conservative cities in the country, I challenged the concept of honor
killings by arguing that the Qur’an does not permit women to be
treated like this. A very religious Muslim tribal leader responded, “This
is honor, what has that got to do with the Qur’an? Men’s honor
comes before the Book.” Our exchange made me realize that invoking
the Qur’an is not a useful way to denounce this violence. Instead,
the con cepts of masculinity, culture, and tradition, which are rooted
in the community, must be studied and utilized to end honor killings.
One of the obstacles that women’s human rights activists face in
their work is the fact that Turkey’s judiciary often justifies honor
killings on the grounds of tradition, culture, and assault on a family
member’s manhood. While the Turkish Penal Code does not have a specific
clause relating to the concept of honor, courts often cite honor as a
mitigating factor in their judgments, stating that a challenge to honor
causes a heavy provocation to the perpetrators of honor killings.
Another obstacle is mainstream human rights activists in Turkey who downplay
the significance of the crime. For instance, a well-known human rights
activist working against capital punishment once complained to me and
other activists that the recent media attention devoted to honor killings
was “exaggerating this women thing to the level of a human rights
violation and therefore diminishing the power of human rights.”
For many such human rights activists, honor killings do not belong on
the same level as torture, lack of freedom of expression, or extrajudicial
executions.
Violence against women is legitimized by the attitudes of state actors,
many mainstream human rights activists, and Turkish society at large because
ultimately gender imbalances are the status quo. Challenging the parameters
of these power dynamics is complex since they are imbedded in interpersonal
relations, family, community, and culture. In short, women lack autonomy—they
suffer when they assert their rights as individuals and go against established
societal norms. Often women are seen as the battlegrounds for men’s
struggles to assert and reclaim their masculinity. Honor killings are
seen as the lesser of two evils since, in some instances, they are thought
to prevent feuds that could destroy the stability of the whole society.
Thus, people in Semse’s village claimed that her death was necessary
to prevent endless violent feuding between her family and that of the
man who supposedly dishonored her through extramarital sexual relations.
In order to prevent honor killings, it is crucial to redefine the concept
of honor within the community. From the moment a woman or girl transgresses
a norm—which she could do by losing her virginity or by calling
the radio station and asking for a favorite song—until the moment
she is murdered in the name of honor, her family and the community she
lives in go through a decision-making process in which they make judgments
about her moral standing. When her name is out as a transgressor, her
male relatives cannot walk in the village with heads high. To reclaim
their manhood in the eyes of other men, they cleanse their honor by stabbing
or sometimes stoning her.
Because such a concept of honor is so imbedded in Turkish culture, and
cultural variables are what we try to understand, use, and hopefully transform
when interfering in these cases, we do not use a human rights framework
when we intervene preventively at the local level. When talking to families,
a cultural discourse proves to be very effective. We believe that male
family members are also victims of the concept of masculinity—they
suffer throughout the decision-making process. We try to give men what
I call cultural and psychological space where their masculinity is not
challenged and they do not feel forced to kill in order to cleanse their
honor. To do this, and in order to help create space for long-term change,
we take advantage of some of the positive aspects of Turkish culture that
offer individual men an excuse to avoid violence. These include special
occasions and gatherings where nonviolent negotiations are encouraged
or where authority figures can act as intermediaries, in which we can
make use of traditions of hospitality toward guests or respect for elderly
people’s recommendations as tools to prevent these crimes.
However, when we talk with government officials, we use a human rights
framework because it is an effective tool for achieving official recognition
that honor killings are a form of extrajudicial execution. One of our
main goals is to use the UN General Assembly resolution “Working
Towards the Elimination of Crimes Committed in the Name of Honor,”
of which Turkey is a cosponsor, within national courts to show that honor
killings are not isolated incidents and should be recognized as human
rights violations. We also refer to the UN Commission on Human Rights
resolution on extrajudicial, arbitrary, and summary executions, which
Turkey has also signed. We think that using these human rights instruments
offers an opportunity for women’s human rights defenders to achieve
official, government recognition of this issue as a human rights violation
and to put violence against women on the same plane as extrajudicial executions
and torture.
Semse’s horrendous death brought people to their feet not only in
Turkey but also around the world. In order to eradicate this atrocious
crime in Turkey, activists must use all possible advocacy tools—changing
society’s discourse by using some of its own terms of reference,
reforming the judiciary, and incorporating a gender perspective into the
human rights advocacy being conducted in Turkey.
Kilde: "In the Name of Honor," Human Rights Dialogue: Violence
Against Women, Series 2, Number 10, Fall 2003 (New York: Carnegie Council
on Ethics and International Affairs, 2003), pp. 30-31
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a response to this article by Zehra F. Arat
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