The Tradition Effect: Framing Honor Crimes in Turkey

dicle kogacioglu

The Tradition Effect: Framing Honor Crimes in Turkey

n honor crime is commonly defi ned as the murder of a woman by members of her family who do not approve of her sexual behavior.1 While there are no official statistics on the crime in Turkey, an incomplete collection of the cases that received coverage in the national media shows that in the three-year period between 1994 and 1996 a total of fi fty-three women fell victim to honor killings (see Yirmibesoglu). Recently two events brought the issue to international public attention: the murder of Fadime Sahindal in Sweden by her father and the death sentence against Amina Lawal and its subsequent overturn in Nigeria. Sahindal was a member of the Kurdish minority in Sweden, where her family migrated from Turkey twenty years before her death. She was a vocal critic of honor crimes, bringing the issue to attention through her legal and public appearances. The series of court cases against Amina Lawal took place in the background of the divide between Christian and Muslim elements in Nigeria and the ensuing tensions between the federal and local juridical structures of the country. Various actors, including the media, political parties, activist circles of various sorts, state institutions, and international bodies of
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governance see honor crimes as primarily caused by tradition, alternately called “codes of honor,” or more broadly, “culture.”2 Yet, even the most superficial examination of such publicized cases as those of Ms. Lawal or Ms. Sahindal reveals that factors such as one’s ethnic identity as a minority, one’s activism, or one’s position in relation to state structures and contestations are integral to the perpetuation of honor crimes. In other words, honor crimes stand at the intersection of multiple political and social dynamics. Clearly, this

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