Turkish Girls pressured into suicide... - Sitcoms Online Message Boards

Ireneparalegal · 07-16-2006, 11:14 PM

Read this article in my local newspaper today...very disturbing:
__________________________________________________________
Virgin Suicides' save Turks' 'honor'
By Dan Bilefsky International Herald Tribune

Published: July 12, 2006

BATMAN, Turkey For 17-year- old Derya, a waif-like woman, the order to kill herself came from an uncle and was delivered in a text message to her cellphone. "You have blackened our name," it read. "Kill yourself and clean our shame or we will kill you first."

Derya said her crime was to fall for a boy she met at school. She knew the risks: Her aunt had been killed by her grandfather for seeing a boy. But after being cloistered and veiled for most of her life, she said, she felt free for the first time and wanted to express her independence.

When news of the love affair spread to her family, she said, her mother warned her that her father would kill her. But she refused to listen. Then came the threatening text messages, sent by her brothers and uncles, sometimes 15 a day. Derya said they were the equivalent of a death sentence.

Consumed by shame and fearful for her life, she said, she decided to carry out her family's wishes. First, she said, she jumped into the Tigris River, but she survived. Next she tried hanging herself, but an uncle cut her down. Then she slashed her wrists with a kitchen knife.

"My family attacked my personality, and I felt I had committed the biggest sin in the world," she said from a women's shelter where she had traded in her veil for a T-shirt and jeans. She declined to give her last name for fear her family was still hunting her. "I felt I had no right to dishonor my family, that I have no right to be alive. So I decided to respect my family's desire and to die."

They call them the "virgin suicides."

Every few weeks in this Kurdish area of southeast Anatolia, which is poor, rural and deeply influenced by conservative Islam, a young woman tries to take her life. Others have been stoned to death, strangled, shot or buried alive. Their offenses ranged from stealing a glance at a boy to wearing a short skirt, wanting to go to the movies, being raped by a stranger or relative, or having consensual sex.

Hoping to join the European Union, Turkey has tightened the punishments for "honor crimes." But rather than such deaths being stopped, lives are being ended by a different means. Parents are trying to spare their sons from the harsh punishments associated with killing their sisters by pressing the daughters to take their own lives instead.

Women's groups here say the evidence suggests that a growing number of "dishonored" girls are being locked in a room for days with rat poison, a pistol or a rope, and told by their families that the only thing resting between their disgrace and redemption is death.

Batman is a grim and dusty city of 250,000 people where religion is clashing with Turkey's secularism.

The Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk featured Batman in his last novel, "Snow," which chronicled a journalist's investigation of a suicide epidemic among teenage girls.

In the past six years, there have been 165 suicides or suicide attempts in Batman, 102 of them by women. As many as 36 women have killed themselves since the start of this year, according to a United Nations official's finding on violence against women. The UN estimates that 5,000 women are killed each year around the world by relatives who accuse them of bringing dishonor on their families; the majority of the killings are in the Middle East.

There have been so many unnatural deaths that the United Nations dispatched a special envoy to the region last month to investigate. After a fact- finding mission, the envoy, Yakin Erturk, concluded that while some suicides were authentic, others appeared to be "honor killings disguised as a suicide or an accident."

"The calls keep coming," said Mehtap Ceylan, a member of Batman's suicide prevention squad. Just hours before, Ceylan had received a call about a 16-year-old girl who had committed suicide, her family said, because they would not let her wear jeans. When Ceylan visited her house, the neighbors told her the girl had been a happy person and had been wearing jeans for years. Ceylan said she suspected some abuse within the family, possibly incest.

"The story just doesn't add up," Ceylan said. "The girl's family says their daughter was eating breakfast, walked into the next room and put a gun to her head. They were acting as if nothing had happened."

Psychologists here say social upheavals in a region rocked by terrorism have played a role in the suicides. Many of the suicide victims come from families in rural villages who have been displaced from the mountains to the cities because of warfare between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers Party, a guerrilla group that wants an independent state in this southeastern region of Turkey.

Young women like Derya, who have previously led protected lives under the strict moral strictures of their families and Islam, are suddenly displaced into the modern Turkey of Internet dating and MTV. This can create dangerous tensions, sometimes lethal ones, between their families and the secular values of the republic that the young women seek to embrace.

Modernity can come at a heavy price. Once a woman is suspected of engaging in sexual relations out of wedlock, her male relatives convene a family council to decide her sentence. Once news of their shame has spread to the community, the family typically rules that it is only through death that their honor, or namus, can be restored.

Human rights groups say the recent trend of forced suicides is an unintended and sinister consequence of the European Union's pressure on Turkey to stiffen its punishments against so- called honor killings.

The European Union has warned Turkey that it is closely monitoring its progress on women's rights and that failure to make progress could impede its drive to enter the Union. Until recently, family members of a dishonored girl, usually a younger brother younger than 18, would carry out the death sentence and receive a short prison sentence because of his youth. Sentences also were reduced under the defense that a relative had been provoked to commit murder.

But in the past two years, Turkey has revamped its penal code and imposed life sentences for murders in the name of honor, regardless of whether they are committed by a minor. This has prompted some families to take other steps, such as forcing their daughters to commit suicide or killing them and disguising them as suicides.

"Families of disgraced girls are choosing between sacrificing a son to a life in prison by designating him to kill his sister or forcing their daughters to kill themselves," said Yilmaz Akinci, who works for a rural development group. "Rather than losing two children, most opt for the latter option."

In an effort to bring honor killings out from underground, Ka-Mer, a local women's group, has created a hotline for women who fear their lives are at risk. Ka-Mer finds shelter for the women and helps them to apply to the courts for restraining orders against relatives who have threatened them.

Ayten Tekay, a caseworker for Ka- Mer in Diyarbakir, the regional center, said that of the 104 women who had called Ka-Mer this year, more than half had been uneducated and illiterate. She said that in many cases the families had not wanted to kill their relatives but that the social pressure and incessant gossip had driven them to murder.

"We have to bring these killings out from the shadows and teach women about their rights," she said. "The laws have been changed, but the culture here will not change overnight."

Derya, fiercely articulate and newly invigorated after counseling, said she was determined to get on with her life. "This region is religious, and it is impossible to be yourself if you are a woman," she said. "You can either escape by leaving your family and moving to a town, or you can kill yourself."

Derya said the deep problem was inequality between the sexes, even though the Prophet Muhammad argued in favor of empowering women.

"In my village and in my father's tribe, boys are in the sky while girls are treated as if they are under the earth," she said. "As long as families do not trust their daughters, bad things will continue to happen."

swedeace · 07-16-2006, 11:30 PM

Yikes. That's where I strongly don't agree with how religions can seemingly act like cliques. This gender inequality is also a problem.

Hollow · 07-16-2006, 11:58 PM

people are so messed up. it's really sad.

dawsongirl · 07-17-2006, 12:18 AM

Apparently the fact that without women, no one could give birth to their "precious sons" means nothing to these people. I will never attempt to understand that type of thinking. Never.

ABlairican Pie · 07-17-2006, 12:33 AM

Islam....religion of peace.

Contemporary grasp of high-tech weapons and methods of death, while embracing medieval attitudes over sex and women.

Courtnee · 07-17-2006, 01:29 AM

Terrible and ****ed up

SBTB Geek · 07-17-2006, 02:01 AM

I still can't get over the "BATMAN, Turkey"

dawsongirl · 07-17-2006, 05:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SBTB Geek

I still can't get over the "BATMAN, Turkey"

lol....I know. Sad story, but you gotta admit, outside of that, the town name is funny.

Hollow · 07-17-2006, 06:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dawsongirl

Apparently the fact that without women, no one could give birth to their "precious sons" means nothing to these people. I will never attempt to understand that type of thinking. Never.

exactly. it also bothers me how often females are thought of to be nothing but worthless sex objects and are so inferior to males. abusive men show that kind of mentality...."yeah that's my bitch and i bang her whether she likes it or not" blah blah blah...

strawberry cupcake · 07-17-2006, 09:45 AM

holy batmobile, that is so messed up. having to kill yourself for liking a boy.

Ireneparalegal · 07-17-2006, 04:34 PM

the girl mentioned in this story was ALLOWED to have a cell phone...but not like a boy????? pathetic people...

THANK GOD I WAS BORN HERE IN AMERICA!!!!!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!

Chocoholic · 07-18-2006, 01:02 PM

That is terrible and sickening. I don't understand why Muslim women continue to allow themselves to be treated this way. Don't they know they deserve so much better?

Ireneparalegal · 07-18-2006, 03:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Homeriffic

That is terrible and sickening. I don't understand why Muslim women continue to allow themselves to be treated this way. Don't they know they deserve so much better?

You think they want to live that way??? It's not a free society where they can stand up and say, "Hey, we don't like this treatment, therefore, stop it." Women there are treated like dirt.

InspectorExstead · 07-18-2006, 03:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Homeriffic

That is terrible and sickening. I don't understand why Muslim women continue to allow themselves to be treated this way. Don't they know they deserve so much better?

All they know is this culture. It's all they've been conditioned to know and they've known it since day one. They don't really know how the Western world treats women and that the way they're being treated is unjust because they're shielded from the Western world.
A lot of less conservative/traditional Muslim families are not like this at all.
But a lot of Muslim men also pick up the "dominant male" mentality because of stuff like this.

Either way...this stuff has always bothered me for a while. And women do not EVER deserve to be treated like this.

Parakeet03 · 07-18-2006, 05:32 PM

That is the sickest thing I've ever read. I just can't undertstand how people could be like that, it's terrible.

07-16-2006, 11:14 PM	#1
Ireneparalegal LEGAL SPICE ;) Forum Legend Join Date: Jul 25, 2005 Location: OXNARD, CA - WHERE THE DALLAS COWBOYS TRAIN & PRACTICE Posts: 38,691	Turkish Girls pressured into suicide... Read this article in my local newspaper today...very disturbing: __________________________________________________________ Virgin Suicides' save Turks' 'honor' By Dan Bilefsky International Herald Tribune Published: July 12, 2006 BATMAN, Turkey For 17-year- old Derya, a waif-like woman, the order to kill herself came from an uncle and was delivered in a text message to her cellphone. "You have blackened our name," it read. "Kill yourself and clean our shame or we will kill you first." Derya said her crime was to fall for a boy she met at school. She knew the risks: Her aunt had been killed by her grandfather for seeing a boy. But after being cloistered and veiled for most of her life, she said, she felt free for the first time and wanted to express her independence. When news of the love affair spread to her family, she said, her mother warned her that her father would kill her. But she refused to listen. Then came the threatening text messages, sent by her brothers and uncles, sometimes 15 a day. Derya said they were the equivalent of a death sentence. Consumed by shame and fearful for her life, she said, she decided to carry out her family's wishes. First, she said, she jumped into the Tigris River, but she survived. Next she tried hanging herself, but an uncle cut her down. Then she slashed her wrists with a kitchen knife. "My family attacked my personality, and I felt I had committed the biggest sin in the world," she said from a women's shelter where she had traded in her veil for a T-shirt and jeans. She declined to give her last name for fear her family was still hunting her. "I felt I had no right to dishonor my family, that I have no right to be alive. So I decided to respect my family's desire and to die." They call them the "virgin suicides." Every few weeks in this Kurdish area of southeast Anatolia, which is poor, rural and deeply influenced by conservative Islam, a young woman tries to take her life. Others have been stoned to death, strangled, shot or buried alive. Their offenses ranged from stealing a glance at a boy to wearing a short skirt, wanting to go to the movies, being raped by a stranger or relative, or having consensual sex. Hoping to join the European Union, Turkey has tightened the punishments for "honor crimes." But rather than such deaths being stopped, lives are being ended by a different means. Parents are trying to spare their sons from the harsh punishments associated with killing their sisters by pressing the daughters to take their own lives instead. Women's groups here say the evidence suggests that a growing number of "dishonored" girls are being locked in a room for days with rat poison, a pistol or a rope, and told by their families that the only thing resting between their disgrace and redemption is death. Batman is a grim and dusty city of 250,000 people where religion is clashing with Turkey's secularism. The Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk featured Batman in his last novel, "Snow," which chronicled a journalist's investigation of a suicide epidemic among teenage girls. In the past six years, there have been 165 suicides or suicide attempts in Batman, 102 of them by women. As many as 36 women have killed themselves since the start of this year, according to a United Nations official's finding on violence against women. The UN estimates that 5,000 women are killed each year around the world by relatives who accuse them of bringing dishonor on their families; the majority of the killings are in the Middle East. There have been so many unnatural deaths that the United Nations dispatched a special envoy to the region last month to investigate. After a fact- finding mission, the envoy, Yakin Erturk, concluded that while some suicides were authentic, others appeared to be "honor killings disguised as a suicide or an accident." "The calls keep coming," said Mehtap Ceylan, a member of Batman's suicide prevention squad. Just hours before, Ceylan had received a call about a 16-year-old girl who had committed suicide, her family said, because they would not let her wear jeans. When Ceylan visited her house, the neighbors told her the girl had been a happy person and had been wearing jeans for years. Ceylan said she suspected some abuse within the family, possibly incest. "The story just doesn't add up," Ceylan said. "The girl's family says their daughter was eating breakfast, walked into the next room and put a gun to her head. They were acting as if nothing had happened." Psychologists here say social upheavals in a region rocked by terrorism have played a role in the suicides. Many of the suicide victims come from families in rural villages who have been displaced from the mountains to the cities because of warfare between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers Party, a guerrilla group that wants an independent state in this southeastern region of Turkey. Young women like Derya, who have previously led protected lives under the strict moral strictures of their families and Islam, are suddenly displaced into the modern Turkey of Internet dating and MTV. This can create dangerous tensions, sometimes lethal ones, between their families and the secular values of the republic that the young women seek to embrace. Modernity can come at a heavy price. Once a woman is suspected of engaging in sexual relations out of wedlock, her male relatives convene a family council to decide her sentence. Once news of their shame has spread to the community, the family typically rules that it is only through death that their honor, or namus, can be restored. Human rights groups say the recent trend of forced suicides is an unintended and sinister consequence of the European Union's pressure on Turkey to stiffen its punishments against so- called honor killings. The European Union has warned Turkey that it is closely monitoring its progress on women's rights and that failure to make progress could impede its drive to enter the Union. Until recently, family members of a dishonored girl, usually a younger brother younger than 18, would carry out the death sentence and receive a short prison sentence because of his youth. Sentences also were reduced under the defense that a relative had been provoked to commit murder. But in the past two years, Turkey has revamped its penal code and imposed life sentences for murders in the name of honor, regardless of whether they are committed by a minor. This has prompted some families to take other steps, such as forcing their daughters to commit suicide or killing them and disguising them as suicides. "Families of disgraced girls are choosing between sacrificing a son to a life in prison by designating him to kill his sister or forcing their daughters to kill themselves," said Yilmaz Akinci, who works for a rural development group. "Rather than losing two children, most opt for the latter option." In an effort to bring honor killings out from underground, Ka-Mer, a local women's group, has created a hotline for women who fear their lives are at risk. Ka-Mer finds shelter for the women and helps them to apply to the courts for restraining orders against relatives who have threatened them. Ayten Tekay, a caseworker for Ka- Mer in Diyarbakir, the regional center, said that of the 104 women who had called Ka-Mer this year, more than half had been uneducated and illiterate. She said that in many cases the families had not wanted to kill their relatives but that the social pressure and incessant gossip had driven them to murder. "We have to bring these killings out from the shadows and teach women about their rights," she said. "The laws have been changed, but the culture here will not change overnight." Derya, fiercely articulate and newly invigorated after counseling, said she was determined to get on with her life. "This region is religious, and it is impossible to be yourself if you are a woman," she said. "You can either escape by leaving your family and moving to a town, or you can kill yourself." Derya said the deep problem was inequality between the sexes, even though the Prophet Muhammad argued in favor of empowering women. "In my village and in my father's tribe, boys are in the sky while girls are treated as if they are under the earth," she said. "As long as families do not trust their daughters, bad things will continue to happen."
	__________________ DALLAS COWBOYS ARE HERE AT TRAINING CAMP!!!

07-17-2006, 12:33 AM	#5
ABlairican Pie Member Forum Superstar Join Date: Dec 12, 2001 Location: Living where cats reign more Supreme than a pizza. Posts: 31,619	Islam....religion of peace. Contemporary grasp of high-tech weapons and methods of death, while embracing medieval attitudes over sex and women.
	__________________ Release the kitties. --Nathan Explosion

07-17-2006, 01:29 AM	#6
Courtnee MAN VS SAMMICH. Forum Star Join Date: Mar 23, 2005 Location: Louisiana Posts: 16,413	Terrible and ****ed up
	__________________ Whether I'm the rose of sheer perfection A freckle on the nose of life's complexion The Cinderella or the shine apple of its eye I gotta fly once, I gotta try once, Only can die once, right, sir? Ooh, life is juicy, juicy and you see, I gotta have my bite, sir. Get ready for me love, 'cause I'm a "comer" I simply gotta march, my heart's a drummer Don't bring around the cloud to rain on my parade

07-17-2006, 09:45 AM	#10
strawberry cupcake back in action Forum Regular Join Date: Jun 17, 2005 Location: texas Posts: 646	holy batmobile, that is so messed up. having to kill yourself for liking a boy.
	__________________ love peace n hair greese. ~dorothy

07-18-2006, 05:32 PM	#15
Parakeet03 :-) Forum Veteran Join Date: Jan 04, 2004 Location: does it matter? Posts: 6,809	That is the sickest thing I've ever read. I just can't undertstand how people could be like that, it's terrible.
	__________________ a long december and there's reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last i can't remember the last thing that you said as you were leaving now the days go by so fast

07-16-2006, 11:30 PM	#2
swedeace Member Forum Fanatic Join Date: Sep 22, 2003 Posts: 9,009	Yikes. That's where I strongly don't agree with how religions can seemingly act like cliques. This gender inequality is also a problem.

07-16-2006, 11:58 PM	#3
Hollow Member Forum Superstar Join Date: Dec 16, 2001 Posts: 30,406	people are so messed up. it's really sad.

07-17-2006, 12:18 AM	#4
dawsongirl Member Forum Icon Join Date: Jan 04, 2001 Posts: 53,140	Apparently the fact that without women, no one could give birth to their "precious sons" means nothing to these people. I will never attempt to understand that type of thinking. Never.

07-17-2006, 02:01 AM	#7
SBTB Geek Smooth Moderator Forum Veteran Join Date: Feb 21, 2002 Location: Southern California Posts: 6,004	I still can't get over the "BATMAN, Turkey"

07-17-2006, 04:34 PM	#11
Ireneparalegal LEGAL SPICE ;) Forum Legend Join Date: Jul 25, 2005 Location: OXNARD, CA - WHERE THE DALLAS COWBOYS TRAIN & PRACTICE Posts: 38,691	the girl mentioned in this story was ALLOWED to have a cell phone...but not like a boy????? pathetic people... THANK GOD I WAS BORN HERE IN AMERICA!!!!!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!

07-18-2006, 01:02 PM	#12
Chocoholic Member Forum Star Join Date: Dec 01, 2000 Location: Between a rock and a hard place. Posts: 11,235	That is terrible and sickening. I don't understand why Muslim women continue to allow themselves to be treated this way. Don't they know they deserve so much better?