Another honor killing, this time in Turkey. From Reuters, with thanks to Cathy J. Palmer:
ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish police have arrested a man and a dozen of his relatives on suspicion of murdering his 14-year-old daughter, a rape victim, to salvage the family’s “honour”, according to newspaper reports.
Turkey, a candidate for European Union membership, is under pressure from Brussels and from human rights groups, to crack down harder on “honour killings”, which involve the murder of women by male relatives for bringing shame on the family name.
Nuran Halitogullari was taken captive and raped late last month by a man while she was going to a market in Istanbul. He kept her prisoner in his home for four days, the papers said.
Police then arrested him and returned Nuran to her parents, but the family decided she must die for “soiling” their name. Her father and 17-year-old brother strangled her with a wire.
They buried her body in a forest and also tried to kill her rapist but he was already in police custody. …
Experts estimate up to 70 women are murdered annually in honour killings in Turkey, mostly in the conservative [i.e., firmly Islamic], mainly ethnic Kurdish southeast region. Scores of other women take their own lives under pressure or fear of attack.
Turkey’s parliament is preparing to strike from the penal code clauses used to reduce sentences for murders committed in the name of honour. It is part of a wider drive to clean up Turkey’s human rights record and promote its EU bid.
In another recent case which drew strong Turkish media interest, a 22-year-old woman was shot dead by her two brothers as she lay in a hospital bed in Istanbul recovering from an earlier assassination bid.
Guldunya Toren was killed for having a child outside wedlock after being raped by a cousin in southeastern Turkey.
In a sign of the changing times, Turkey’s Muslim preachers recently condemned honour killings and said all forms of murder were a sin in Islam and were forbidden.
That’s great. I hope they convince everyone in Turkey. But there is much evidence that this practice is justified on Islamic grounds. Last year Jordan’s Parliament rejected a law stiffening penalties for honor killings because Islamic hardliners, according to Al-Jazeera, “said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values.”