sometimes i think about how disparaged we are to be living in a third world country run by people who are too corrupt to lead us to any real progress. but reading about this made me realize how good we have it still.
this is an article i found on the MSN website. hope it gives you clarity as well.
----------------------------------------------------------------
International Report: Women Forced to Commit Suicide
By Jan Goodwin
"Kill Yourself or Your Family Will Kill You"
In Turkey, honor suicides are now replacing honor killings for girls who bring "shame" on their families.
Perched on the edge of the sofa so that her feet just reach the floor, Derya, 17, is the picture of innocence: large almond eyes, too-long jeans turned up at the cuff, Alice headband. But Derya is here at this women's shelter in rural Turkey because her family wants her dead. Her crime: talking to a male classmate on her cell phone — the closest thing to dates many teens in strict Islamic societies have before marriage.
Derya met Recep, 16, in high school in 2005. "In those phone chats after school, I fell in love," she says. "That had never happened to me before, because in my
culture, love comes after marriage."
In March of 2006, when her uncle (with whom she was living) realized what was going on, he confiscated Derya's cell phone. She bought another. He took that one away, too. She borrowed one from a friend. Her uncle alerted her mother, who warned her to cut off communication with Recep. "But I couldn't stop," Derya says. "Part of me was angry. Everyone uses cell phones. Why not me?"
Two months later, she received a text message. "Don't come home again," it read. "You have shamed our honor. You must kill yourself. If you don't, we will." More threats followed — from brothers, uncles, male cousins — sometimes 10 or 15 a day. "It was terrifying," says Derya. She began to see only one solution to her dilemma.
Last June, Derya threw herself into the fast-flowing Tigris River near the Iraqi border, but a passing police patrol pulled her out. At home the following day, she attached a rope to a stout ceiling hook meant to hold a baby's cradle, then tied it around her neck and kicked over the chair on which she was standing. When her uncle heard the crash, he cut down the half-conscious teenager and rushed her to the hospital, having summoned some sympathy for her. But after she was released, the text messages intensified — her family cursing her for failing at suicide and her uncle for saving her. Derya made one last, failed, attempt, cutting her wrists with a kitchen knife. "I so hated my life," she says. "I just wanted it to end."
Walking along the Bosporus or strolling through Istanbul, the look is familiar: girls sporting skinny jeans, high-heeled boots, cropped tops, and tattoos, smoking cigarettes. On the surface, relationships between young men and women seem decidedly Western. There's no shortage of bars and discos; there's even the occasional store selling sex toys. So it comes as a bit of a surprise to learn that modern Turkish women are expected to live with their families and guard their virginity until they marry.
But then, Turkey has long been a paradox. Women received the right to vote and run for public office in 1930, years before their counterparts in many European countries. In 1993, Turkey elected a female prime minister, while the United States has yet to give a woman the top job. Still, though primary-school education has been mandatory since 1927, in rural regions, nearly half of all women have been denied schooling by their families and remain illiterate. Head scarves are banned in government offices and universities, but a growing number of women wear them as part of an Islamic resurgence. Just as confounding, Turkey's current Islamist government won by an overwhelming majority — but claims to be committed to secularism. And in a country where forced virginity tests in high schools were only recently outlawed, abortion is legal and more readily available than in the U.S.
"When it comes to gender issues in Turkey, the picture is mixed," says European Union spokeswoman Krisztina Nagy. "Turkey has the highest proportion of female professors in Europe, at 27 percent. At the same time, we know the stories about victims of honor crimes." Such crimes involve family members taking the life of a wife, daughter, sister, or niece because she has shamed them, usually by wearing Western clothes, forming friendships with men, or marrying someone not chosen by her parents.
Lately, human-rights advocates have noticed a new trend in Turkey: Since the country began expressing a desire to join the European Union, there's been a noticeable drop in the number of reported honor killings. In 2004, for the first time, Turkey made honor killings punishable by life imprisonment. Could the country be cleaning up its act in order to meet the standards set forth by the EU?
Then advocates noticed another unusual statistic: "Between 2001 and 2006, there were 1,806 murders in Turkey that fell under the definition of honor killings," says State Minister for Women and Family Affairs Nimet Çubukçu. "Meanwhile, during the same period, 5,375 women committed suicide." In Batman, a town neighboring Derya's, female suicide rates are rapidly increasing. "Recently, seven girls committed suicide in a month," says Batman City Councilwoman Nurten Uzumeu. "Two months ago, we had 20 more suicides."
Turkish authorities now suspect that "honor suicides" are replacing traditional honor killings as a way to eliminate a woman who has shamed her family, without drawing the attention of the police. "It's not right that girls get treated like this and boys get all the freedom," says Derya, who is now receiving protection from a local shelter. "The men in my family are viewed as God. Women aren't even treated as human beings."
At the edge of a main artery outside the city, a large house sits behind a high metal fence. For security reasons, the window blinds are always closed. Fourteen women and six children call this place home, having fled the threats of their husbands and families.
Sitting in a wooden chair, Zeynab, 33, plucks compulsively at her skirt with calloused hands. Short and stocky, wearing a floor-length skirt, long-sleeved blouse, knit vest, thick socks, and a head scarf, she is a rural Kurd. Quietly, she tells her story: She and her husband married for love, refusing a customary arranged marriage — something for which her in-laws never forgave her. When her husband, Ali, died of meningitis, she lost his protection. Since tradition decrees that a son and his wife live with his parents, Zeynab was all the more vulnerable.
"They'd hit me with a metal bar, drag me across a room by my hair," she says. "One beating was so bad, I passed out. I was terrified and depressed." Then one afternoon, her brother-in-law walked up to her and shoved a gun into her hand. "'You should kill yourself,' he told me. 'You are a black mark on our honor.' If I didn't kill myself, my mother-in-law said they'd do it for me."
That was spring 2006. By June, Zeynab made her move, slipping out of the house and grabbing her 11-year-old son, Hussein, who was playing outside. A woman she had met in a nearby park had told her about the shelter.
"For the first time, Hussein is in school," says Zeynab. "But every day when he goes, my heart is like a bird in my chest. I'm always terrified the family will capture him, and I won't see him again. I have nightmares every night that I go out and they catch us."
By any account, Turkey has a long way to go before meeting the EU's membership criteria. "The EU needs a stable, increasingly democratic, and prosperous Turkey on its side," says EU spokeswoman Nagy. "The country has progressed a lot in recent years, but there is still much to be achieved."
Then there are those Turks who see an anti-Muslim bias in the EU's criticisms of their country and claim they no longer want to join a "Christian club." "The imperialist EU dares to tell us how to improve the rights of our women," wrote Dogu Ergil, a respected
Turkish Daily News
columnist, in February. "In my mind this is a direct intervention into the internal matters of a country."
It is difficult to say what will win out — hard-line Islamism or progressive thinking. Either way, the lid has been lifted on honor suicides. Last September, eight female high-school juniors and seniors in Batman set the town on its ear by marching from their homes to the local cemetery after yet another honor suicide. They carried placards reading, "No More Violence. No More Suicides." Not surprisingly, the girls soon began receiving threats.
Still, says local sociologist Gulistan Toskin, "It's the first time anything like this has happened in Batman. It was a risky thing for them to do. They ignited a fire, and it's still burning."
No comments:
Post a Comment