Turkish Man Kills 14-Year-Old Daughter

ANKARA, Turkey - 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 (news - web sites), 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.

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.

Burned alive
(Filed: 26/04/2004)

As a teenager in the West Bank, Soauad became
pregnant by a local boy. He 'shamed' Palestinian
family condemned her to death and she was set on
fire by her brother-in-law. Every year, thousands
of women in the Middle East die in 'honour
killings'. Souad survived. This is her harrowing
story

He came towards
me and said, with a
smile: "Hi. How
goes it?" He was
chewing a blade of
grass. "I'm going to
take care of you."

I hadn't been
expecting that. I
smiled a little, to
thank him, not
daring to speak.

Suddenly I felt a
cold liquid running over my head; I was on fire. I
slapped at my hair. I screamed. My dress billowed
out behind me. Was it on fire, too? I smelt the petrol
and ran, the hem of my dress getting in the way. Did
he run after me? Was he waiting for me to fall so he
could watch me go up in flames?

I'm going to die, I thought. That's good. Maybe I'm
already dead. It's over, finally.

My name is Souad. My story began almost 25 years
ago in my native village in the West Bank, a tiny
place, in a region then occupied by the Israelis. If I
named my village, I could be in danger, even though
I am now thousands of miles away. In my village I
am officially dead; if I were to go back today they
would try to kill me a second time for the honour of
my family. It's the law of the land. It's because I am
a woman.

A woman must walk fast, head down, as if counting
the number of steps she's taking. She may never
stray from her path or look up, for if a man catches
her eye, the whole village labels her a charmuta,
prostitute. A girl must be married before she can
raise her eyes and look straight ahead, or go into a
shop, or pluck her eyebrows and wear jewellery. My
mother was married at 14. If a girl is still unmarried
by that age, the village begins to make fun of her.
But a girl must wait her turn in the family to be
married. The eldest daughter first, then the others.

There were four girls of marrying age in our
household. There were also two half-sisters, by our
father's second wife, who were still children. The
one male child of the family, who was born in glory
among all these daughters, was our brother Assad.

Twenty-five years ago, I spoke only Arabic; I'd
hardly been further than a few kilometres beyond
the last house on the dirt road. I knew there were
cities further away but I had never seen them. I did
not know if the earth was round or flat. What I did
know was that we had to hate the Jews, who had
taken our land; my father called them halouf, pigs.
We were forbidden to go near them for fear of
becoming pigs like them.

My brother went to school, but the girls did not.
Where I come from, being born a girl is a curse: a
wife must first produce a son - at least one - and if
she gives birth only to girls, she is mocked. At most,
only two or three girls are needed to help with the
housework, to work on the land and tend the
animals.

Our stone house was big, and surrounded by a wall
with a large door of grey iron. Once we were inside,
it closed on us to prevent us going out. You could
enter by this door from the outside, but you could
not go out again. My father and mother went out,
but not us girls. My brother went out and came back
through that door; he went to the cinema - he did
as he liked.

A day without a beating was unusual. My father
would shout, "Why have the sheep come back by
themselves?" then pull me by the hair and drag me
into the kitchen to hit me. Once he tied up my sister
Kainat and me, our hands behind our backs, our legs
bound, and a scarf over our mouths to stop us
screaming. We stayed like that all night, tied to a
gate in the stable.

This was life in our village. The girls and women in
the other houses were beaten regularly, too. You
could hear the crying. My sister was beaten by her
husband and she brought shame on our family when
she came home to complain.

My mother had 14 children, but only five survived.
One day I learned why. I must have been less than
10; Noura, my elder sister, was with me. We came
back from the fields, and found my mother lying on
the floor on a sheepskin. She was giving birth, and
my aunt Salima was with her. There were cries from
my mother and then from the baby. Very quickly my
mother took the sheepskin and smothered the baby.
I saw the baby move once, and then it was over.
She was a girl. I saw my mother do it this first time,
then a second time. I'm not sure I was present for
the third, but I knew about it. And I heard Noura say
to her: "If I have girls, I'll do what you have done."

That was how my mother got rid of the seven
daughters she had after Hanan, the last survivor.
From then on I hid and cried every time my father
killed a sheep or a chicken.

As long as I lived with my parents, I feared I would
die suddenly. I was afraid of going up a ladder when
my father was below. I was afraid of the hatchet
used for chopping the wood, afraid of the well when
I went for water. That well was my greatest terror,
and my mother's too. I sensed it. Sometimes, coming
back from the fields with the animals, my elder sister
Kainat and I talked about what might happen:
"Supposing everybody's dead when we get home . .
. And what if Father has killed Mother? A blow with a
stone is all it would take!"

The possibility of our mother dying preoccupied us
more than the death of a sister, because there were
always other sisters. Our mother was often beaten,
just as we were. Sometimes she tried to intervene
when my father hit us especially viciously, and then
he'd turn on her, knocking her down and pulling out
her hair.

I haven't seen my brother Assad for 25 years, but I
would like to ask him one question: "Where is our
sister Hanan, who disappeared?" Hanan was a
beautiful girl, very dark and prettier than me, with
thick hair and heavy eyebrows that joined above her
eyes. She was not thin like me. She was dreamy and
never very attentive to what was said to her. When
she came to help us pick olives, she worked and
moved slowly. This wasn't usual in my family; you
walked fast, you worked fast, you ran out to bring
the animals.

I was in the house one day when I heard shouting.
My little sisters and I ran to see what was
happening. Hanan was sitting on the floor, arms and
legs flailing, and Assad was leaning over her,
strangling her with the telephone cord. We pressed
ourselves against the wall to make ourselves
disappear. Assad must have heard us come in
because he yelled "Rouhi! Rouhi! Get out! Get out!"

When my parents came home, my mother spoke to
Assad. I saw her crying, but I know now she was
just pretending: I've come to understand how things
happen to girls in my land. It is decided at a family
meeting, and on the fatal day the parents are never
present. Only the one who has been chosen to do
the killing is with the intended victim.

I don't know why Hanan was condemned to die. Did
she go out alone? Was she seen speaking to a
man? Was she denounced by a neighbour? It
doesn't take much for everyone to see a girl as a
charmuta who has brought shame to the family and
must die to restore their honour - as well as that of
the entire village.

As I grew up, I waited hopefully for a marriage
proposal. I was 18 by then and had grown to hate
village weddings because all the girls made fun of
me. No one asked for Kainat, my elder sister; she
had resigned herself to remaining an old maid. I
found this terribly depressing, because I had to wait
until Kainat was married before I could take a
husband.

Then I discovered that a neighbour, Faiez, had
asked for me. "But we can't discuss marriage for the
time being," my mother told me, "we have to wait
for your sister."

Faiez lived in the house opposite ours. Sometimes I
caught sight of him from the terrace where I laid out
the laundry to dry. He must have had a good job in
the city because he didn't dress like a labourer. He
always wore a suit, and he carried a briefcase and
he had a car.

I imagined that we were married, that he'd come
back from work at sunset and I'd remove his shoes
and, on my knees, I'd wash his feet as my mother
did for my father. I would be a woman with a
husband! Maybe I'd even be able to put on
make-up, get into his car with him, and go into town
to the shops.

But what to do? I wanted him to know that I was
waiting, too. I decided to do everything I could to
speak to him, at the risk of being beaten or stoned
to death. One morning I heard his footsteps on the
gravel outside his house. I shook my wool rug over
the edge of the terrace and he looked up. He saw
me and I knew he understood, although he made no
sign and not a word was spoken.

There were regular, secret meetings. One day he
placed his hand on my thigh. I pushed it off. He
looked annoyed. "Why don't you want to? Come
on!" I was so afraid that he'd go away, that he'd
look for somebody else. So I let him do what he
wanted - without quite knowing what was going to
happen to me. He wasn't violent, but the pain took
me by surprise. He told me he was in love with me.

One morning, in the stable, I suddenly felt very
strange. The smell of the manure made me dizzy.
And later, as I prepared the meal, the mutton made
me feel ill. I tried to find a reason that wasn't the
worst one. Of course, I couldn't talk to anyone. If I
was pregnant, my father would smother me in the
sheepskin blanket.

When I told Faiez, his face went blank. He promised
to talk to my father. He said I should wait - "Until I
give you a sign." The days passed, and he gave me
no sign. I was hopeful all the same, every evening,
of seeing him appear out of nowhere, as he had
before, to the left or right of the ravine where I hid.

Three or four months later, my stomach began to
get larger. It was my father who came towards me,
on a washing day, his cane striking the ground of
the courtyard. He stopped behind me. "You're
pregnant," he said. I dropped the laundry into the
basin. I couldn't look up at him. "No, father," I
insisted. Later, I pleaded with my mother, assuring
her that I had had my period.

There was a family meeting, which of course I wasn't
allowed to attend: my parents, Noura and my
brother-in-law Hussein. I listened behind the wall,
terrified.

My mother spoke to Hussein: "We can't ask our son.
He won't be able to do it - he's too young."

"I can take care of her."

Then my father: "If you're going to do it, it must be
done right. What do you have in mind?"

"Don't worry about it. I'll find a way."

I heard my sister crying, saying she didn't want to
hear this and that she wanted to go home. Hussein
told her to wait, then confirmed arrangements with
my parents: "You'll go out. Leave the house. When
you come back, it will be done."

I couldn't comprehend what I had heard. I
wondered if it could have been a dream, a
nightmare. Were they really going to kill me? And if
they did, when would it be? How? By cutting off my
head? Maybe they would let me have the child then
kill me afterwards? Would they keep the baby if it
was a boy? Would my mother suffocate it if it was a
girl?

The next day my mother told me that she was going
to the city with my father. I knew what it meant. I
looked at the courtyard ; it was a big space, part of
it was tiled, the rest covered with sand. It was
encircled by a wall, and all around on top of the wall
were iron spikes. In one corner, the metallic grey
door, smooth on the courtyard side, without a lock
or key, and only a handle on the outside. If he came,
he could only enter by that door.

Suddenly I heard it clang. My brother-in-law was
there, he was coming towards me. He was smiling.

Twenty-five years later I see these images again as
if time has stopped. I was sitting on a rock, barefoot
in a grey dress. I had lowered my head, unable to
look at him; my forehead was on my knees. Then
suddenly I was running and on fire and screaming.
There were women, I remember, two of them, so I
must have climbed over the garden wall and into the
street. They beat at me, I suppose with their
scarves. They dragged me to the village fountain; I
felt the cold water running on me and I cried out
with pain because it burnt me too. I heard women
wailing over me. "The poor thing . . . The poor thing .
. ." I was lying in a car. I felt the jolts of the road. I
heard myself moan.

Later, on a hospital bed, I was curled up in a ball
under a sheet. A nurse had come to tear off my
dress. She pulled roughly on the fabric and the pain
jolted me. I slept, my head still stuck to my chest, as
it was when I was on fire. My arms were extended
out from my body and both were paralysed. My
hands were still there, but I couldn't use them. I
wanted to scratch myself, to rip off my skin to stop
the pain.

When I woke again I saw two bare feet, a long
black dress, a small form like mine, thin, almost
skinny. It wasn't the nurse. It was my mother. Her
two plaits were smoothed with olive oil, her black
scarf, that strange forehead, a bulge between her
eyebrows over the nose, a profile like a bird of prey.
She frightened me. She sat on a stool with her black
bag and started to weep, her head rocking back and
forth. She wept with shame, for herself and the
whole family. And I saw the hatred in her eyes.

Never will I forget that big glass she filled to the top
with a transparent liquid, like water. "Drink this. It's
me who gives it to you."

I was so thirsty I tried to raise my chin, but I
couldn't. Suddenly a young doctor - one of the few
members of staff who had treated me kindly - came
into the room. My mother jumped. He grabbed the
glass from her hand and banged it down on the
windowsill. "No!" he shouted. He took my mother by
the arm and made her leave the room. "You're lucky
I came in when I did," he told me when he returned.
"From now on no one from your family will be
allowed in here."

Three or four days later, I still hadn't eaten or drunk
anything since being admitted to hospital. I knew
they were letting me die because it was forbidden to
intervene in a case like mine. I was guilty in
everyone's eyes. I would endure the fate of all
women who sully the honour of men. They had only
washed me because I stank. They kept me there
because it was a hospital where I was supposed to
die without creating more problems for my parents
and the village. Hussein had botched the job: he
had let me run away in flames.

One night I felt a strange pain, like a knife stuck into
my stomach. I could feel something strange
between my legs. I didn't realise, at first, that I was
giving birth. The doctor heard my cries and came into
the room. He leant over and took the baby away,
without showing it to me.

Later he told me that I had given birth at six months
to a tiny boy, but that he was alive and being cared
for. I heard vaguely what he was saying to me, but
my ears had been burned and hurt so terribly.

Someone came into the room once, in the middle of
this nightmare. A hand passed over my face without
touching it. A woman's voice, with a peculiar accent,
said to me in Arabic: "I'm going to help you, do you
understand?" I said yes, without believing it. I was
so uncomfortable in that bed, the object of
everyone's scorn; I didn't understand how anyone
could help me. But I said yes to that woman. I didn't
know who she was.

My second life began in Europe at the end of the
1970s in an international airport. Concealed behind
a curtain, my body smelt so much that the
passengers on the plane taking me to Europe
protested.

But next to me, in a cradle, was my son Marouan. I
gazed at his face, long and dark, under the hospital
bonnet. He had been found in an orphanage, where
the hospital had sent him because I was expected
to die.

The woman, Jacqueline, a worker for a humanitarian
organisation, had tracked him down. She had also
persuaded my parents to sign me over to her, telling
them that she was going to take me somewhere
else to die. My father, I later learned, had made her
promise that they would never see me again:
"NEVER AGAIN!" They would tell the village that I
had died, and their honour would be intact.

Jacqueline was taking me to the serious burns unit
of a Swiss hospital. The day after we arrived I had
an emergency operation, to free my chin from my
chest and allow me to raise my head. For long
months there were skin grafts, 24 operations in all.
My legs, which hadn't been burned, provided
replacement skin until there was none left to give.

At first, my arms hung stiffly at my sides, like a doll's,
but eventually the medical staff straightened them
so that I could move them. I began to stand, then
walk in the corridors and to use my hands.

I now live in Europe, where I am married to a good
man, Antonio. We have two daughters. When
Marouan was five, I signed a paper for his
foster-parents to adopt him. We had lived together
with this foster family for four years after our arrival;
his parents were also mine. I still feel guilty for
making this choice, but I knew he was happy, and
he knew I was alive. I was 24 and I didn't feel I
could stay any longer. I had to work, gain my
independence and finally become an adult. I would
not have been able to raise him alone.

I am still Muslim, but I retain few of the customs of
my village. I detest violence. If someone reproaches
me for being critical of the Muslim religion I try to
help them understand what they haven't
understood before. My mother frequently quarrelled
with our neighbours. She would throw stones at
them or pull their hair. In our country, the women
always go for the hair.

More than 6,000 "honour" crimes are committed
every year - in the West Bank, Jordan, Turkey, Iran,
Iraq, Yemen, India and Pakistan. In Pakistan the
custom is an accepted part of national culture. In
Jordan, a man who has killed his wife in a state of
rage is entitled to the judge's clemency; the same
law applies to a man who kills his wife simply
because he suspects her of adultery. It is
increasingly common for "disgraced" families to hire
bounty hunters, so women who manage to escape
to other countries are forced into hiding.

I have since met many of these women. One young
girl has no legs: she was attacked by two men who
tied her up and put her in the path of a train.
Another girl's father and brother tried to murder her
by stabbing her and throwing her into a dustbin.
There is another whose mother and brothers threw
her out of a window: she is paralysed.

I have never met any other burned women. As far
as I know, none of them have survived.

Edited from Burned Alive by Souad (Bantam),
published on May 1. To order for £11.99 + £2.25
p&p, call Telegraph Books Direct on 0870 155 7222.

Souad was rescued by the Swiss charity SURGIR
(Arise). You can send donations to Banque
cantonale vaudoise, 1001 Lausanne, account
number U 5060.57.74 or to the address on the
www.surgir.ch website.
Email: office@surgir.ch

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