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News & ArtsFriday, February 5, 2010
Religion One of the Many Problems with this Islamic Country
Posted by Charles Mudede on Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 10:53 AM
This simply boggles the modern mind:
Turkish police have recovered the body of a 16-year-old girl they say was buried alive by relatives in an "honour" killing carried out as punishment for talking to boys.Honor killings account for over half of the murders in Turkey. What is so hard to grasp in all of this is the reason why the culture hates women so deeply? By all appearances, it's a culture of serial killers. How in the world can a parent override the most basic, biological love for one's own child with this honor nonsense? Worse than that is the slowness of the state to act and punish. Honor killings thrive because the state permits it.The girl, who has been identified only by the initials MM, was found in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a two-metre hole dug under a chicken pen outside her home in Kahta, in the south-eastern province of Adiyaman.
Police made the discovery in December after a tip-off from an informant, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported on its website.
The girl had previously been reported missing.
The informant told the police she had been killed following a family "council" meeting.
Her father and grandfather are said to have been arrested and held in custody pending trial. It is unclear whether they have been charged. The girl's mother was arrested but was later released.
...A postmortem examination revealed large amounts of soil in her lungs and stomach, indicating that she had been alive and conscious while being buried. Her body showed no signs of bruising.
2
Turkey always gets a bad rap in English-speaking countries. Quick--name an English language film where a Turk is the good guy?
3
Part of the challenge is women in Turkey don't feel they have the ability to challenge their husbands, fathers, uncles, male family members. That challenge is, as you suggest Mr Mudede created by their belief system/Life style choice.
Keep in mind that the "honor" is generally so that the Male members of the family can walk about and not have to hang their head in shame that one of their "women" got out of line. Religion is about control. Men (male gender) create such life styles to control others.
Yes somethings are that simple.
Keep in mind that the "honor" is generally so that the Male members of the family can walk about and not have to hang their head in shame that one of their "women" got out of line. Religion is about control. Men (male gender) create such life styles to control others.
Yes somethings are that simple.
4
Charles,
Indeed, this is ghastly and barbaric. I genuinely believe Islam needs a Reformation (Christopher Hitchens mentions this in his book "God is Not Great"). When a child becomes a hostage to a "culture", I believe that "culture" has become a cult. This actrocity is absolute bullshit. The family must be held accountable. And, the Occident must not yield to this "culture".
Check this out from yesterday:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/na…
Indeed, this is ghastly and barbaric. I genuinely believe Islam needs a Reformation (Christopher Hitchens mentions this in his book "God is Not Great"). When a child becomes a hostage to a "culture", I believe that "culture" has become a cult. This actrocity is absolute bullshit. The family must be held accountable. And, the Occident must not yield to this "culture".
Check this out from yesterday:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/na…
5
@3, if I may take liberties with your statement; religion is more than about control it is OUT OF CONTROL!!!
6
@2
I believe the fine film "Dirty Pretty Things" featuring Audrey Tautou portraying a Turkish immigrant in London comes to mind. She and the African doctor are the protaganists/heroes in that movie.
I believe the fine film "Dirty Pretty Things" featuring Audrey Tautou portraying a Turkish immigrant in London comes to mind. She and the African doctor are the protaganists/heroes in that movie.
9
Anyone in Europe who is opposed to Turkey joining the EU doesn't have far to go to find a good reason. Turkish culture will always have a problem seeing women and men as having parity. A hallmark of the west is the notion that women have the same value as men. It wasn't always like that, of course. We once viewed women as property, but the west reformed, at least in this regard. Turkish, and the larger middle-eastern culture has not had this reformation that is so desperately needed. Until women are valued as equals, nothing resembling modernity can be realized.
10
#6 Right you are, regarding "Dirty Pretty Things". Let me amend that: what's an English-language film where a Turkish man is a good guy?
11
@7,
I'm sure you're right, but their yahoos are still much more backwards than ours, and that's really saying a lot.
I'm sure you're right, but their yahoos are still much more backwards than ours, and that's really saying a lot.
12
@9 While I'm sure that's true in many areas of Turkey, I just find it hard to reconcile with some of the Turkish women I have been friends with and/or worked with. The two I'm thinking of grew up in Turkey, came here for college and to work for a few years, and then went back to Turkey. Neither of them were appreciably different from my American friends in terms of their attitudes towards women/men/family (i.e., they were very "modern", though saying that sounds patronizing) and I didn't get the sense that their families thought they had less value than men. But, they were all young (in their 20s) and obviously from somewhat well-to-do families, so that likely has something to do with it.
I just think we have to be careful talking about "Turkish culture", when it's clear that there are areas/cities where people don't ascribe to those "traditional" values any longer.
I just think we have to be careful talking about "Turkish culture", when it's clear that there are areas/cities where people don't ascribe to those "traditional" values any longer.
13
Ugh.
I was going to go on a screed of some sort here, maybe something about religion, or something about patriarchal bullshit and man-child insecurity, but I don't have it in me. This is just too fucking sick.
"Honor." Pfeh.
I was going to go on a screed of some sort here, maybe something about religion, or something about patriarchal bullshit and man-child insecurity, but I don't have it in me. This is just too fucking sick.
"Honor." Pfeh.
14
#7-- Tell me a little bit about West Virginia and the comparison you draw you slanderous piece of shit. You think people are more likely to slaughter each other like animals (or worse) in West Virginia than in Seattle? I'd like you to either back that up or take it the fuck back. Show me some fucking evidence that West Virginia either is any more particularly fundamentalist in nature than the rest of interior America or has any phenomenon that resembles honor killings.
15
Southeast? The question then is how much of this is Turkish culture/society and how much is backward Kurdish culture in that heavily Kurdish populated area?
Check out the Kurdish Womens Rights Watch for more information of this practice which is still common in Kurdish culture:
http://www.kwrw.org/
Check out the Kurdish Womens Rights Watch for more information of this practice which is still common in Kurdish culture:
http://www.kwrw.org/
17
@14 I agree with you for the modern era, but I have to say you sound like someone with a serious "honor" problem...
18
The state recently increased the minimum sentence for those committing honor crimes because of complaints that the average punishment for an honor crime was more akin to sentences given for theft than for murder. Judges and prosecutors have been handing out slaps on the wrist for decades, and only recently have they been shamed into treating the murder of women with the same levity as the murder of men.
20
Only on the Internet. Not by, you know, burying people alive.
Generally Mudede's habit of conflating whatever depravity which happens to occur in a rural area with the value of global rural culture overall gets my ire up. It is lazy, incorrect and tiresome, and contributes to the multi century slander of appalachians as somehow barbaric and less human. I feel that narrative is harmful for myself and my family. So... Overreacting? No.
Generally Mudede's habit of conflating whatever depravity which happens to occur in a rural area with the value of global rural culture overall gets my ire up. It is lazy, incorrect and tiresome, and contributes to the multi century slander of appalachians as somehow barbaric and less human. I feel that narrative is harmful for myself and my family. So... Overreacting? No.
21
@3 and @7... Have you been to Turkey lately? American's typically end up meeting and speaking to a small sliver of the secular, educated urban elite for obvious reasons, they speak English, they dress like us and they love Western culture. Yes, women of the urban elite can wear whatever they want, but many lower income Turkish women are rarely allowed to leave the house unchaperoned. 54% of the Turkish public thinks that women should not wear short sleeved shirts in public and sociologists working on gender equality issues are threatened with bodily harm on a regular basis. My housekeeper was killed when her husband tossed her off a twelfth floor balcony and her family called it suicide, he wasn't prosecuted and now has custody of their son. She was a woman living in Istanbul, wasn't allowed to go out in public without a headscarf and was only allowed to work outside the home because housecleaning is woman's work. The religious conservatives are moving in droves to the cities as the economies of smaller towns flounder. A metropolis like Istanbul, which once upon a time was more French than Turkish, is now a place where at least half of women cover their heads and men won't yield to women on sidewalks because, to them, women barely exist.
22
@12, I have a Turkish coworker and the other day we were discussing exactly what you touched on in your first paragraph. Basically, most people in Turkey with even a half-decent education end up heading off to other European countries or the US due both to a dearth of real economic opportunity (although that is improving) and concerns about a quasi-religious bent that the government seems to be heading towards. Though technically a secular republic, there seems to be an undercurrent of theocratic leaning in government circles, and speculation that the Prime Minister puts on a face of secularism while privately leaning towards Islamicism.
24
Turkey may be much more secular than most islamic nations, but the subjugation of woman in this part of the world is cultural, not religious. Modern, wealthy Iranian woman living in the affluent part of Tehran also have a liberal mode of dress, so what? In both places, women know exactly where not to cross the line.
25
A friend of mine weighs in:
"When i visited Turkey in the 80's, a place called "the compound" was pointed out to me in the village of Adana. the compound was a whorehouse where a husband who had been caught doing some crime could send his wife to pay off his debt to Turkish "society."
"When i visited Turkey in the 80's, a place called "the compound" was pointed out to me in the village of Adana. the compound was a whorehouse where a husband who had been caught doing some crime could send his wife to pay off his debt to Turkish "society."
26
You know, Turkey today doesn't sound a whole lot different than, say, Spain into the 1980s -- a country where today you might well find hardcore porn, maybe even hardcore gay porn, playing unnoticed on a TV in a hotel bar. It's easy to throw around "they've been like that centuries" but very few of us have any real conception of what that means. Times change.
27
On the other hand, things change both ways, apparently Istanbul was more modern and open to gender equality in the 1960's than it is today.
28
I find it hard to believe that noone has trolled "Such Nice Dogs..." in this post. Trolls must be busy tonight.
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