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Father Preserves His Moslem Honor By Strangling 14-Year-Old Daughter
Ignoring the pleas of his 14-year-old daughter to spare her life, Mehmet Halitogullari pulled on a wire wrapped around her neck and strangled her â supposedly to restore the familyâs honor after she was kidnapped and raped. Nuran Halitogullari ... is the latest victim in a long history of so-called "honor" killings. .... Each year, dozens of girls are killed in Turkey by their relatives for allegedly disgracing their families â some for merely being seen speaking to men. The practice is especially common in the more traditional southeast and among families who have migrated to big cities from the region. .... Parliament last year voted to raise the punishment for such crimes to as long as 24 years in prison. But a loophole in the laws allows relatives to escape with sentences as light as eight years if they can prove they were "provoked" into committing the crime. .... Turkey has embarked on a major overhaul of its penal code and is expected to rectify the loophole, but the draft code is still weeks away from being endorsed. Some politicians on Thursday called on the government to immediately bring the issue to parliament. Lawyer Senal Saruhan, a womanâs rights advocate, fears the draft may not go far enough. She insists that family members who incite or encourage the killings should be punished alongside the perpetrators. .... Womenâs groups believe that a number of suicides among young women in the southeast are actually murders by relatives who believe they are saving the family honor. Often the youngest member of the family is forced to carry out the killings in the belief that a youth would get a less-stringent punishment. .... Halitogullari was abducted in Istanbul on her way back from a trip to the supermarket and raped over six days. She was rescued by police and returned to her family. .... Mehmet Hatipogullari told police he and other relatives took the girl to an auntâs home where he strangled her, ignoring her pleas and her cries. "I decided to kill her because our honor was dirtied," the newspaper Sabah quoted the father as saying. "I didnât listen to her pleas, I wrapped the wire around her neck and pulled at it until she died." He said he buried her body beneath a chicken coop, which upset his other children, and later reburied her in a forest. The newspaper said Halitogullari also had planned to kill his daughterâs rapist. Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-04-30 |
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