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November 5, 2003
Zehra F. Arat responds to Leylâ Pervizat's article "In the Name of Honor." (Use the link in the right sidebar to read "In the Name of Honor.")
Leylâ Pervizat aptly describes honor killings as a custom with no
religious foundations. This ancient Mediterranean practice is wrongly
associated with Islam, and consequently its persistence in a secular
state like Turkey is deemed puzzling. Since the cases in Turkey are
concentrated in the less-developed southeastern region, the media and
urban elite consider them a symptom of residual traditionalism that
resists the state’s modernization efforts.
Pervasive patriarchal norms and values lie at the core of this
issue. Regardless of their constitutional equality and legal position
as equal citizens, culturally women are treated as dependents of, or
“minors” under the custody and protection of, men. Thus, violations of
women’s rights by men who are responsible for them and care for them
are not seen as violations or are not treated seriously. As extrajudicial executions, honor killings undermine the rule
of law, both by privatizing its legislating and enforcement and by
employing a subjective, arbitrary definition of “the crime” committed
by women. Thus, they constitute offenses against the state, yet the
state is mute on this matter. In fact, the reduced sentences often
given to perpetrators of honor killings implicitly condone the act
rather than serve as deterrents. The state also upholds the same values about the importance of
“preserving honor” by introducing separate legal categories for
assaults. The Turkish Penal Code defines crimes that involve sexual
violence against women as “felonies against public decency and family
order,” while other forms of assault against the person are placed
under “felonies against individuals.” Within this “family-oriented”
framework of the law, a rapist would be pardoned if he agreed to marry
his victim. Moreover, females’ virginity and the honor of married women
are upheld as public values and concerns in both the penal code and the
Law on Police Duty and Authority, in which minimum and maximum
sentences for sexual assaults vary according to the marital status and
virginity of the victim, and the police are charged with protecting
honor and chastity against “public morality and rules of modesty.”
(Having such a duty, however, does not prevent the police from abusing
their power by sexually assaulting women in custody or threatening them
with rape during interrogation sessions. At the same time, the
obsession with honor and the classification of women according to their
marital or virginity status allow the police to subject women in
custody to the forced “virginity tests.”) Honor killings are an effort to control women’s sexual
behavior and restrict their sexual freedom. However, the control
stemming from the desire to prevent women’s immodest behavior that
could bring “shame” to the family, of which killing is the most extreme
example, manifests itself in many additional ways: many girls and women
are subjected to confinement, intimidation, and physical abuse that
force them to live in perpetual terror. Such restrictions violate a
whole set of women’s rights in addition to the right to life, ranging
from freedom of movement to freedom from torture and the right to
health. CEDAW, ratified by Turkey in 1985, obliges states to take the
necessary measures to abolish customs and practices that discriminate
against women. However, the Turkish state not only fails to take
measures against the custom and practice of honor killings but
reinforces the same cultural norms of honor and decency that support
such killings through its own legal and administrative apparatus. Pervizat brings to our attention the unfortunate fact that
some human rights activists, too, tend to ignore honor killings, or
even treat the attention directed to them as a distraction from what is
considered to be more serious human rights issues, such as capital
punishment. Ironically, not seeing honor killings as capital punishment
stems from defining human rights narrowly as individual rights against
the state and addressing human rights violations only if the
perpetrator is a state official. This classical liberal understanding
of human rights has been criticized by feminists for undermining
women’s rights, which are most likely to be violated by private
citizens within the “private” domain, as well as by some human rights
advocates for dismissing the interdependency of human rights. The task ahead of women’s rights advocates, in Turkey and
elsewhere, seems to require a two-part struggle: first, to force the
state to amend its laws and take measures to change discriminatory
cultural traits, as it is obliged to do as a party to the international
human rights treaties; and second, to expand human rights education and
engage human rights activists in a dialogue about the interdependency
and indivisibility of human rights and the counterproductive outcomes
of “selective” endorsement of human rights. Recently, efforts by feminists and human rights activists,
along with the European Union’s membership criteria, forced Turkey to
undertake legislative reforms that address some gender discrepancies.
Pursuing multiple strategies with different audiences (for example,
using human rights law with state officials and a different approach
with families of potential victims), KA-MER, too, seems to have
achieved some results. Undeniably, fighting against discriminatory
cultural norms and practices by invoking other, more egalitarian
cultural traits from the same culture would be the most effective way
of achieving a human rights–oriented culture. Doing so, however, calls
for the utmost care, especially when hierarchical relationships are
involved, because the traditional authority revived and reinforced to
help women today may once again be the source of their renewed
repression tomorrow.
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