This paper titled “Honor Killings” in Turkey, was presented
at the “Strategies to Address Crimes of Honor” meeting in
London, UK organized by the CIMEL, University of London, and INTERRIGHTS
on February 15-17, 2002 by Leylâ Pervizat.
I chose to involve with “honour
killings” shortly after coming back from the 4th World Conference
on Women in Beijing because of this following incident. It was late
in February 1996; a young girl named Sevda Gök was publicly executed
in the market area of the city of SanliUrfa around 16.00 hours. Her
adolescent cousin stabbed her repeatedly with a knife while her two
brothers held her arms down. According to the limited information we
have, her family accused her of running away from home and her name
was ‘out in the street’. Even though the crime occurred
in a very busy area and time of a day, there were no witnesses to be
found . Forensic examination concluded that she was a virgin. At the
time of murder, the defendant was 14 years old, and the victim was 16
years old .
As a feminist researcher, after witnessing
this incident of extra judicial execution in the media, I wanted to
conduct qualitative research. But before that, I needed to collect court
cases to see how the Justice system in my country is handling these
cases at the court of law. I collected summaries of cases from four
different cities in Turkey. The timeline of the cases vary in each city.
It is usually within a three-year span of time. They are composed of
cases relating to the ‘honour killings’, execution of men
in the name of honour, forced suicides as well as forced abortions,
and murder of the newborns by their own mother on the grounds that conceiving
occurred out of wedlock or in dishonourable circumstances. I found four
cases of murder of newborns by their own mothers out of concern for
having had sex out of wedlock. I was very surprised to find even one
single case. Because all these infant murders happen quietly and no
one talks about them, the simple fact that some of these murders find
their ways into the legal system is quite interesting . Thus, finding
four such cases is very unusual. There were also cases of suicides and
forced abortions as well. I also found out that substantial number of
marriages conducted thorough Berdel, which is the exchange of young
girls between families instead of dowry.
Although there are no special clauses
in the Murder Section of the Criminal Code referring to the “defence
of honour”, the honor factor as an excuse of defense is widely
cited in the reasoning process of the Judges in 200 cases I collected
from 4 different cities. Whether it is premeditated or not, the executions
are usually viewed with great leniency, in other words the whole system
grants impunity to men committing such crimes. I also found that substantial
number of marriages conducted thorough Berdel .
It may be noted that these cases are
just the tip of an iceberg and the real picture has more horrendous
details than these cases represent. More importantly, what was documented
in the court and what really went on in the actual cases are assumed
to be very different. The witnesses lie, the prosecutors do not prosecute,
and the Judges fail to try cases in its due and just manner. In other
words, the whole justice system simply may fail to use due diligence
in bringing justice when these crimes are concerned. What is written
in the cases and what really happens are two different things. Not all
cases go to the police and not every murder becomes a legal case for
investigation. There are many questionable suicides . When a woman disappears,
no one talks about it. Not all executions or forced suicides are publicized.
Before I move on describing how the murders
are committed, I would like to give my definition for crimes committed
in the name of honour. “Honour killings” as one of the most
horrendous forms of women’s human rights violations and a form
of extra judicial execution, is subjected on individuals who believe
or are perceived to believe in values and standards which are at odds
with the social mores of the society in which they may live. The definition
is not mine. It was given to define “particular social group”
within the meaning of Article 1A(2) Under the Refugee Convention after
a Pakistani woman’s application on the grounds of asylum for fear
of murder in the name of honour.’ I adopted their words into defining
honour killings in my research.
The following few paragraphs is on how
this horrendous human rights violation is practiced by private individuals
in Turkey. Once it is decided that a woman has transgressed social and
community norms, family members, usually male members, but the women
may aide in the killing of women in different ways , come together to
discuss how and who will execute the woman. Usually what happens is
that the father or an elderly member of the family gathers the male
members of the family, known as aile meclisi in Turkey, to decide on
how and who will execute the woman who disobeyed the family's orders
or dishonoured the family.
It is important to understand that the
gathering is never about deciding on whether to execute the women or
not, but it is about working on the details of the act. The decision
to execute the woman is already made prior to the gathering once it
has been known that she acted or failed to act in certain way, and now
she is a damaged good. In some families and in some areas, the woman
is usually given the choice of committing suicide thereby saving the
family name. More often than not she chooses to do so.
If not, one of her younger male relatives
would be chosen to kill the woman. Adolescent boys are chosen by the
family since they get shorter sentences in the court of law for homicide.
Sometimes these young boys take great pride in this hideous act they
commit. Usually the behavior is further endorsed by their inmates in
the prison. The inmates wash these young boys’ feet and tell them
that now they are “complete” men. The act is regarded as
a rite of passage into manhood in some areas of the country. Afterwards
the execution is expressed loudly in the local area. In the city of
Gaziantep, after the murder of a woman or a girl, the family painted
their house in white to show that they cleaned their honor. In Black
Sea region, entire Northern part of the country, the sexual organ of
the man is cut and displaced by the bodies to indicate that it is an
honour killing. As the leading Forensic Scientist indicated the way
the murder is conducted says many things about this sexualized crime.
Shooting towards genital organs is as a way of declaration of “cleaning
one’s honor”. It has also been reported by a journalist
Mehmet Farac of Cumhuriyet, a daily Turkish newspaper that sometimes
lawyers are hired prior the execution committed so that the offender
will get a shorter sentence at the court of law.
In some cases, while women were being
executed, they did not fight for their life and just stood there and
wait for the murder to happen. They knew what was coming and this sign
of great hopelessness should be a clue for us all in eradicating this
violence. After the execution customary religious and traditional practices
are not always followed, the family sometimes does not claim the body
of the deceased. Sometimes they are not involved with the funeral procedures.
The locals do not visit the deceased’s family for expressing the
condolences; on the contrary they visit the family, especially the murderer(s)
and the male members of the family to express their get-well wishes.
In these cases, it is the man’s honour cleaned and he needs to
be congratulated on the act it was committed.
It is impossible to list all of the findings
of my research here, however, I would like to touch upon some crucial
findings of my research on the legal angle of this horrendous practice
. First of all, I’m sure you are all aware that Turkey is secular,
we use secular law not shari`a law. Our Penal Code copied that of the
Italians. In our Penal Code, murdering or attempting to murder one's
family member is punishable by life imprisonment but in my research
none of the defendants got this sentence. A dichotomy in the court's
reasoning can be found in many arguments such as citing the community
as a social constraint factor on the perpetrator and ignoring the family
committee decision in analyzing these cases. The language used in the
summaries show how Justice Department in Turkey is masculine and patriarchal.
At this point, I would like to talk about
one of the biggest misconceptions on Penal Code. Article 462, one of
the most controversial clauses in the law, has the attention of feminist
scholars and activists in Turkey. This Article has been singled out
as one of the most problematic reasoning in the judicial system. Unfortunately,
at some quarters of the Women’s Movement in Turkey, there is a
misunderstanding towards the Article 462. The Article 462 is thought
to be the source of the problem and is held entirely responsible for
the big injustice towards women. Article 462 reads as “if a relative
surprises one of the family members at the time of adultery, or just
immediately before the act, or immediately after the act”, there
will be a significant reductions in the punishment the defendant will
receive. Although this Article itself is a gross violation of human
rights, and should be removed promptly from the Code, it is almost an
inactive part of the Law .
However, in my research I found that
Article 462 is the Scapegoat. Very few of the cases I gathered are tried
by the judges with this Article in mind. On the contrary to the established
belief the reason for lack of usage of this Article is not only the
burden of proof. The reason is that the Judges have great level of power
under their authority in deciding these culturally sanctioned crimes.
They are able to set the male perpetrators free by using many other
discrepancies in the law. In other words, in this case the Judges’
decision to refer to this particular article is the exception rather
than the rule. According to the Judicial Statistics of the State Institute
of the Statistics, among 22.323 homicide felonies in 1995, only one
of them was tried under the Article 462 at the court of law. Moreover,
only 3 cases out of the 200 cases are tried under this Article.
There are two proposals made by the Women’s
Status and Problem Department (KSSGM) to the Justice Department in reforming
the Penal Code for the advancement of women’s human rights. The
Minister suggested that paragraph 12 under Article 450 of the Turkish
Penal Code, the premeditated murder article, should be added. Paragraph
12 will suggest that “if an act is committed for honour”,
then a higher sentence must be awarded. The other proposal concerns
Article 453 regarding the killing of a newborn baby, and seeks to provide
a defense in such cases of post-natal trauma, which would change the
sentence to four to ten years.
Even though these proposed changes in
law are good and seems timely, what is necessary in Turkey is gender
sensitivity training for the judiciary. Although we all know that the
Turkish Penal Code is not a perfect and flawless document, the primary
objective should be about focusing on gender sensitivity training of
the judiciary. We must all remember that current patriarchal system
and its malestream members will reform the current document. So let
us be careful what we are asking for. I would rather see the using the
current text and implementing the law to its highest level than busying
myself with reforming it.
Kilde: Foredrag afholdt på konference på
University of London, arrangeret af CIMEL og INTERRIGHTS
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