Turkish Man Kills 14-Year-Old Daughter
By SUZAN FRASER
Associated Press Writer
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- Ignoring the pleas of his 14-year-old daughter to spare her life, Mehmet Halitogullari pulled on a wire wrapped around her neck and strangled her - supposedly to restore the family's honor after she was kidnapped and raped.
Nuran Halitogullari, buried Thursday in a ceremony attended by women's rights advocates, is the latest victim in a long history of so-called "honor" killings, which Turkey's government is struggling to curb.
Each year, dozens of girls are killed in Turkey by their relatives for allegedly disgracing their families - some for merely being seen speaking to men. The practice is especially common in the more traditional southeast and among families who have migrated to big cities from the region.
Honor killings also occur in Pakistan and some countries of the Middle East and among immigrant families in EU countries like Britain and Sweden. The European Union, which Turkey aspires to join, is pressing the country to take steps to curb a practice it says is a violation of women's rights.
Parliament last year voted to raise the punishment for such crimes to as long as 24 years in prison. But a loophole in the laws allows relatives to escape with sentences as light as eight years if they can prove they were "provoked" into committing the crime.
European countries want Turkey to ensure that family members cannot benefit from the loophole.
"No reductions should be made and everyone should know that such crimes will be punished and that no one can escape," Sweden's ambassador to Turkey, Anne Dismorr, said in an interview with the weekly Nokta magazine. "In our view the main cause behind the honor killings is the fact that honor is regarded as grounds for reduced sentences."
Turkey has embarked on a major overhaul of its penal code and is expected to rectify the loophole, but the draft code is still weeks away from being endorsed. Some politicians on Thursday called on the government to immediately bring the issue to parliament.
Lawyer Senal Saruhan, a woman's rights advocate, fears the draft may not go far enough. She insists that family members who incite or encourage the killings should be punished alongside the perpetrators.
"Unless we bring severe punishments we will never stop these killings," she said.
Guldal Aksit, the minister in charge of women's issues, added that attitudes are what really need to be addressed to stop the deeply entrenched practice. "These are not problems that we can solve on paper by changing laws ... We need to educate society," she said.
Women's groups believe that a number of suicides among young women in the southeast are actually murders by relatives who believe they are saving the family honor. Often the youngest member of the family is forced to carry out the killings in the belief that a youth would get a less-stringent punishment.
On Wednesday, authorities charged two brothers with murder after they shot their 22-year-old sister in the head in her hospital bed, where she was recovering from an earlier attack by them. The woman had had a child out of wedlock.
Last year, a pregnant woman was reportedly stoned to death by her family after having an affair and buried in a pauper's grave after her family refused to hold a funeral.
In the latest case, newspapers said Halitogullari was abducted in Istanbul on her way back from a trip to the supermarket and raped over six days. She was rescued by police and returned to her family.
The murder came to light this week but it was not clear when it took place.
In a rare confession, Mehmet Hatipogullari told police he and other relatives took the girl to an aunt's home where he strangled her, ignoring her pleas and her cries.
"I decided to kill her because our honor was dirtied," the newspaper Sabah quoted the father as saying. "I didn't listen to her pleas, I wrapped the wire around her neck and pulled at it until she died."
He said he buried her body beneath a chicken coop, which upset his other children, and later reburied her in a forest.
The newspaper said Halitogullari also had planned to kill his daughter's rapist.
Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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