This is just horrifying.
Since the Turkish government began cracking down on honor killings last year, a new trend is currently being investigated by the UN: serial suicides among young girls and women.
These incidents have been occurring mostly in the Kurdish southeast. An example is in Batman, where 10 of the 14 people who have committed suicide have been women and girls under the age of 23. (A few were as young as 12 years old.)
Activists are saying that these girls and women are being forced by their families to commit suicide because male relatives that usually commit honor killings are being given life sentences under a new penal code. In result, these girls are being told that if they don’t kill themselves, their father or brother will have to go to jail.
Others speculate that some are being murdered and then presented as suicide to the authorities. The UN Special Reporter on Violence Against Women, Yakin Erturk, is being sent to the area to find out exactly what is happening.
Amnesty International estimates that between a third and half of women living in Turkey suffer from some form of domestic violence.
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Wow. If this turns out to be true, that is awful (although even if it is not true, suicides are awful too). The only good news here is that it seems the government truly is trying to crack down on honor killings.
There's a place called batman?
Effin' Sweet!
this makes me very sad.
do you know of any groups involved with helping these women?
this makes me very sad.
do you know of any groups involved with helping these women?
What's even more sad about this is that these women won't be given proper burial rights, and traditionally, when someone dies everyone prays for God to forgive their sins... and they won't get that either.
So if this is true, not only are these girls being told that their lives are less important than their fathers and brothers going to jail... they're also being told they don't deserve religious salvation. This type of perversion of Islam's principles makes me utterly sick.
It is horrifying. It's disgusting that they're finding a way to get around being held responsible for the "honor" killings. It makes me wonder, however...if we only knew the statistics in the US (where one in three girls is sexually abused before she turns 18) on child sexual abuse suicides. These girls are told that reporting is "ruining the 'family.'" I think these victims also believe their lives are less important than the lives of their fathers/brothers/perps. Different, yet similar.
If the reasons suggested are indeed the case, then it is truly awful and disgusting. Orhan Pamuk's novel, Snow, delves into other possible reasons for these suicides which have gone on for a long time and in spurts in Turkey. It may not be as simple as is being suggested. Either way, it is tragic.
Um, while I'm reading My Name is Red, and enjoying it, I do keep in mind that it's a novel, not actual UN reporting!
AGAIN HAS EVERYONE ELSE MISSED THE SWEETEST PART OF THIS POST?!!?!?!?!?!
Um, yes, people are dying unnecessarily in Batman. Yippee.