ISTANBUL // When a Turkish man rescued his daughter after she was abducted by a gang that forced her into prostitution, he was hailed a hero by many in the country. But people in his own home region of south-eastern Anatolia turned against him, because he refused to do what traditional laws of family honour say must be done in a case like this: kill the girl.
"My daughter did not go voluntarily," the man, who did not want to be identified in order to protect his 18-year-old daughter, told Turkish newspapers last month. "Why should I kill her?"
The idea that a girl or a woman has to pay with her life if she sullies her family's honour by her conduct is still powerful in some areas of Turkey, especially in the poor Kurdish region in the south-east. In some cases, it is enough if a woman talks to a stranger to seal her fate. Underage boys of the family are often selected to commit so-called honour killings because they can expect lighter prison sentences if convicted.
Almost 300 women have been murdered by family members in Turkey since 2001, according to a new study based on court cases that was published this month.
Osman Celbis, a researcher from the Inonu University in the eastern city of Malatya, told the Anatolian news agency that 288 women and 56 men were killed. Male victims of honour crimes are often killed after cases of rape.
"It is a problem of mentality," said Remziye Tanrikulu, a lawyer in Diyarbakir, the main city of Turkey's Kurdish area, and an expert on honour killings.
Turkey amended its penal code in 2005 to deter honour killings. Among other changes, parliament cancelled a former provision that allowed courts to reduce significantly jail terms for perpetrators of honour killings on the grounds that they had been "provoked" by the victim's allegedly dishonourable conduct.
Still, the killings are continuing, observers said. Both Mr Celbis and Ms Tanrikulu said because of the stricter provisions of the new penal code, women were forced to commit suicide or their murders were dressed up as suicides.
The real figure of female victims of honour killings was much higher than 288, Ms Tanrikulu said. "There are cases presented as suicide and those that are presented as murders with motives outside family honour. You cannot even estimate the real figure."
As the man who saved his daughter experienced himself, the murder of a child is sometimes seen as a necessity by society. "Because I did not kill my daughter but did everything I could for her, people around me have turned their backs on me," he told Turkish newspapers.
The girl was kidnapped last year in front of her school in Diyarbakir in south-eastern Turkey by gang members who took her to several Anatolian cities and pressed her into prostitution by beatings, threats and the administration of drugs, news reports said. After more than six months, she managed to escape and call her father's mobile phone from the capital Ankara. He gave her the address of relatives in Ankara, picked her up there and returned to Diyarbakir with his daughter.
Since their return, the family has been repeatedly threatened by gang members who wanted the father to return the girl to them, news reports said. The family moved to another apartment and changed their telephone number. Gang members still came after them. Police have arrested one suspect and are looking for the others, newspapers reported. Alerted by the reports about the case that became public only last month, Nimet Cubukcu, the minister for Women Affairs, publicly applauded the father's attitude and asked social services in Diyarbakir to help the family.
But the minister's statement, while an important step, is unlikely to dent the power that traditional values of family honour have in the region. Also, not all state representatives are as supportive as Ms Cubukcu, Ms Tanrikulu said. "In Turkey, the laws are not the problem, it is the application," she said. "There are still judges who are tolerant [towards honour killings] and act with an attitude of male hegemony."
A recent poll conducted by Mazhar Bagli, of Diyarbakir's Dicle University, showed how deep-rooted the traditional ideas of family honour still are. In the study, which interviewed 190 convicted men in 46 prisons, 47 per cent of perpetrators of honour crimes said they were not sorry for what they did.
Confirming that support of families and communities for honour crimes is still strong, 42 per cent of the convicts polled said their families reacted positively to what they did, Mr Bagli told the NTV news channel.
The approval rate in the community outside the immediate family was even higher, at 46 per cent.
If a murderer is convicted after an honour crime, he can rely on the rest of his family to look after his children in many cases, the study found. Maybe as a result of the strong social backing, 41 per cent of convicts said they would do the same again if the same situation arose in the future.
tseibert@thenational.ae
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Power: 400hp
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Babumoshai Bandookbaaz
Director: Kushan Nandy
Starring: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Bidita Bag, Jatin Goswami
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How to protect yourself when air quality drops
Install an air filter in your home.
Close your windows and turn on the AC.
Shower or bath after being outside.
Wear a face mask.
Stay indoors when conditions are particularly poor.
If driving, turn your engine off when stationary.
Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
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From Zero
Artist: Linkin Park
Label: Warner Records
Number of tracks: 11
Rating: 4/5
Electric scooters: some rules to remember
- Riders must be 14-years-old or over
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- Park the electric scooter in designated parking lots (if any)
- Do not leave electric scooter in locations that obstruct traffic or pedestrians
- Solo riders only, no passengers allowed
- Do not drive outside designated lanes
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Kanguva
Director: Siva
Stars: Suriya, Bobby Deol, Disha Patani, Yogi Babu, Redin Kingsley
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Nayanthara: Beyond The Fairy Tale
Starring: Nayanthara, Vignesh Shivan, Radhika Sarathkumar, Nagarjuna Akkineni
Director: Amith Krishnan
Rating: 3.5/5