Turkeyâs Muslim preachers must speak out in favor of womenâs rights and condemn so-called honor killings, a government minister was quoted as saying yesterday. âHonor killingsâ involve the murder of women by male relatives to defend what is regarded as family honor. They are not uncommon in Turkeyâs conservative, impoverished southeast. State Minister Mehmet Aydin made his appeal after Turkish newspapers reported the fatal shooting of a woman on Friday by her two brothers as she lay in a hospital bed in Istanbul recovering from an earlier assassination attempt. The papers said Guldunya Toren, 22, who came from the town of Bitlis in southeast Turkey, had been killed after giving birth to a child outside wedlock a few months ago. The Vatan daily said she had been raped by her cousin.
| "Been raped, huh? Well, she must be killed! Maybe her cousins'll do it?" |
âIn the coming weeks, I think sermons will be read in the mosques on the rights of women,â the Anatolian state news agency quoted Aydin as saying. âOur people and our laws already define the killing of people for traditional reasons (honor killings) as âmurderâ... Taking the life of another, and indeed suicide, are deemed a sin in our religion and are forbidden. It is not people but laws which punish the guilty.â Aydin is a professor of the philosophy of religion. |