Honour Killing

Stories of Men Who Killed

Ayse Onal

• Publisher: Saqi Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780863566172
• eBook ISBN: 9780863568077
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Honour killing persists across the Middle East, where regimes refrain from tackling primitive traditions for fear of sparking unrest. Ayse Onal interviewed imprisoned men in Turkey convicted of killing their mothers, sisters and daughters. The result is a revealing and ultimately tragic account of ruined lives - both the victims' and the killers' - in a country where state and religion conspire to hush up the killing of hundreds of women every year.

1

REMZIYE

I had only just returned home when the phone rang. I was tired from days of travelling, and fed up because the convict I’d requested to interview had refused to see me. The young man, who had killed his fourteen-year-old sister five years before, had refused to utter a single word on the subject, and had gone so far as to complain about me to the prison authorities. I was still smarting as I picked up the receiver.

‘They’re dead.’

It was my cameraman.

‘Who’s dead?’ I said.

‘Your protégés, they died in a car accident in Austria.’

A lump formed in my throat. ‘You mean Remziye?’ I asked.

I was greeted by silence at the other end of the line. Then, ‘No one knows whether or not there was any criminal intent. It’s been over two weeks since the accident. We’ve only just found out.’

‘What about the child?’ I asked.

‘No one knows.’

The line went dead.

And they say bad news travels fast. My tiredness had lifted; the searing pain in my chest revived me. I went outside and jumped into the car. I drove without any idea of where I was going; I did not see Istanbul as I passed it.

The lives of the people who occupy the crammed buildings of this city, which are piled on top of each other from the outskirts to the centre, are worlds apart, separated by insurmountable obstacles. Children scavenge for food in rubbish bins while their rich counterparts pass by in flashy chauffeur-driven cars on their way to school. There are no thick black lines dividing the social classes in Istanbul. Just as the most destitute can be found in the choicest districts, there are mansions belonging to the filthy rich in the poorest areas.

While some girls are being killed for honour, others walk freely through the same streets with their latest lover. The poor do not hide their poverty from the rich, nor the rich their riches from the poor. Without the merest glance in the other’s direction, without ever touching, lives that have hit rock bottom and lives that have soared sky high make love, fight, carouse and die in the same streets. For this reason alone Istanbul is unique. For this reason it is possible for those who live in Istanbul to suffer the same hardships without ever knowing they have done so.

I didn’t meet Remziye Öztürk until she was a teenager but, when I met her, she told me the story of her life and so I have written this chapter according to what happened to her, from childhood onwards, even though I didn’t know these things until the end of her life.

The Öztürks are a large, religious Kurdish family from Bitlis who took refuge in Istanbul. Being Sunnis, they settled in a conservative district of Sultanbeyli, backing onto Ümraniye. They live in a large gecekondu¹ district on the Asian side of the city, populated by Kurdish immigrants. Sunni and Alevi Kurds have traversed the same path of migration, but mysteriously their religious beliefs are so divided that it is as though there are ruled lines separating the neighbourhoods that they have built. Local services – such as refuse collection and electricity supply covering the Sunni district – end on the outskirts of the Alevi district as abruptly as if they’d been severed with a knife. Those who live in the Alevi district have to either create their own local services, or renounce their beliefs. The Sunni Kurds consider the Alevi Kurds degenerates who have betrayed the faith, while the Alevi Kurds fear the Sunni Kurds who demand that everyone be like them.

A few houses further north live the Öztürks’ older uncles; a few houses further south, their older aunts. They have expanded from the first Öztürk house the way moths cluster around a light bulb: a huge neighbourhood made up of only one family.

It hasn’t even been a quarter of a century since they migrated from Mutki, one of the most conservative administrative districts of Bitlis, to Istanbul. The family’s father had been made very anxious by the Kurdish revolt, which, clearly, from the first raid in which scores of children were killed, was going to be very bloody. He had bundled up his belongings and moved to Istanbul. While the women in the tribe were scurrying back and forth packing up for their new home, the men had bought an illegal plot of land for the Öztürks to build a roof over their heads and on it they had constructed a gecekondu worthy of their family dignity.

In Istanbul gecekondus are built so that they can eventually be transformed into apartments. Although the political parties are mainly dependent on the middle classes for the majority of their votes, they have always played on the gecekondu vote. Approximately one in four gecekondu-dwellers actually use their vote, and party voting figures are invariably unreliable. After every election there is a gecekondu pardon, whereby the houses in violation of town planning rules are legalised. So every dweller eagerly anticipates the opportunity to turn their temporary house into a permanent apartment building. Storeys are added to the houses as sons get married, so the family that built the original gecekondu becomes a rich property owner a quarter of a century later, when the building is five storeys high.

The Öztürks conformed to this tradition to the letter; although they had not quite managed five storeys, since first immigrating they had become the proprietors of three storeys, with two apartments per floor.

Remziye was a stranger to the Bitlis chapter of the family history. She was born when the second storey of the gecekondu in Sultanbeyli had been completed. Her father, who planted a tree in the garden after the birth of each son, chopped a tree down when she was born. Among tribes, being the father of daughters is partly shameful and partly problematic. Because girls often run away with men they want to marry, they are the most common cause of blood feuds, second only to land disputes. For this reason it is an established tradition to marry off daughters as soon as they are born. This also ensures that the sons of the family stay out of trouble. And so, to protect her family from any potential problems that might arise in Istanbul where the lifestyle was so full of temptation, the moment Remziye was born a ‘cot betrothal’ to her uncle’s youngest son was performed. Unbeknown to the newborn baby she was now shielded against the devil’s incitements. The two babies’ families made an agreement upon their honour that the babies would be married. And to seal the match the baby boy’s swaddling clothes and the baby girl’s hair were threaded with the same blue beads to ward off the evil eye.

Remziye grew up dominated by four older brothers, two of whom were married. At the age of eight, according to her mother’s wish, her head was covered. All the girls’ heads in their neighbourhood were covered, but Remziye was the youngest.

At her mother’s insistence she was sent to primary school several years later than her contemporaries. Remziye wore a uniform inside school and kept her head covered outside, and she finished with top grades. She flew home waving the certificate she believed would make her family truly proud, with one request: to be taken to the seaside. But her wings were clipped before she’d even entered the house.

Her mother, considering such notions inappropriate for a girl, and a poor girl at that, flew into a rage. Not only had she herself never seen the sea, but she wasn’t even aware that there was any sea in Istanbul. Her daughter was getting ideas above her station. None of her sons had gone on to higher education; they had found it difficult enough finishing primary school. Remziye’s success highlighted her sons’ failure. Before the men in the house had even seen them, Remziye’s mother burned her daughter’s glowing reports on the stove. But when, in that same year, Remziye was the first to recite the Qur’an by heart in the girls’ course at the mosque, her mother’s anger abated.

The family put a barbed wire fence all the way around their gecekondu. They planted trees in the gaps in the fencing and reserved the rest of the plot for planting vegetables. They had a coop in which they raised over fifty chickens, and directly beside it a small barn where they kept a few sheep and a cow.

When the last born after Remziye was also a girl her father refused to look at his wife ever again. He had forgotten that she had given him eight sons. Instead of resenting her husband, her mother blamed Remziye. Her daughter was so quick-witted and intelligent that she frightened men. In the mornings, bright and early, she would feed the chickens, milk the sheep and cow, then run to school. In the afternoons, after school, she would take the sheep out to pasture, and then go to the Qura’nic course at the mosque.

As soon as the two-hour class was over she’d run home holding that day’s section of the Qur’an, then prepare the evening meal. At weekends she would prepare wafer-thin yufka bread – dampened with water, wrapped in a cloth and stored in the pantry – with such skill it put her mother in the shade.

In summer they would go to Bitlis and, over the course of three months, prepare tomato paste, honey, pepper, preserves, dried fruit and vegetables, dried pasta, sheets of dried fruit pulp, walnuts, braised meat preserved in oil, butter and curd cheese for the whole tribe. Towards the middle of autumn they would bundle up the provisions they had made and the entire tribe would return to Istanbul, like a modern caravan convoy.

Remziye deeply resented having to do this. The men in the family did practically no work, while the women tilled the fields, prepared provisions for winter and did all the household chores. Yet it was the men who were served the thighs of the fried chicken, the freshest of the fruit compote, the crunchy edges of the pastry böreks.

Her mother was tired of Remziye’s irreverent protests. The girl, who didn’t dare open her mouth in front of her father, seized every opportunity to question her mother whenever the men weren’t around. Why didn’t her father ever work? Why hadn’t her brothers continued with their education? Why were the girls forbidden to watch television when the men were around? Why was it always the girls who worked? On one occasion her mother had had enough of Remziye’s endless bombardment.

‘If the women didn’t do these jobs why would the men ever listen to them? A woman either does the devil’s work and brings trouble on her husband’s head, or she works and lets him take it easy. Do you want to know what happens when a girl doesn’t work?’ And with that Remziye’s mother brought the rolling pin down on her daughter’s head.

As her brothers got married and settled into the apartments on the upper storeys, Remziye’s workload got heavier. As if the care of her own younger sister was not enough, the care of the new brides’ babies was also left to her. Still she did not utter a single word of complaint. As her mother said, the harder she worked the easier it would be for her to obtain permission to go on to secondary school. That summer in Bitlis she used every imaginable ploy to persuade her father to let her go. Her father would not give her a definite answer but just said, ‘Let’s get safely back to Istanbul first.’

But going back to Istanbul did nothing to help her cause. Besides, school had started at the beginning of September and the family didn’t return until the beginning of October. Remziye seized an opportunity to go and find her primary school teacher. She begged him to persuade her father to let her have an education.

When the teacher came to Remziye’s house one evening he was given a warmer welcome than he might have expected. Not only did the family serve him freshly made, buttered, yufka bread with honey but they also prepared a separate package for him to take home. It looked as though the teacher had persuaded the family because Remziye’s father had said, in reply to his request that Remziye should have an education, ‘We’ll see, we’ll do whatever bodes best.’

But no sooner had their guest left the house than each of her elder brothers set upon Remziye in turn and beat her. Remziye was stunned. The sociable, tolerant, hospitable family of a moment before had vanished. In its place was a savage pack, foaming at the mouth. She was familiar with her father’s temper, but her mother was transformed beyond recognition. With a hatred that put her father’s hatred in the shade she removed Remziye’s hijab and yanked her hair. How could she have made a stranger party to their private business?

Remziye cried all night. In the morning her mother made her stand before her and ordered her to tell the teacher that her father had given her permission, but that she herself had changed her mind about going to secondary school. Escorted by her older brother, she went to school. Remziye did as she had been told. Noting her swollen eyes and the purple bruise on her temple that was just visible beneath her hijab, the teacher did not believe her. But because her older brother was standing behind her he pretended that he did. He decided to report the case to his superiors and make sure that the girl continued with her education. But it was all in vain. The family was very obliging to the people who came to persuade them, insisting it was Remziye herself who no longer wished to study. Before long the matter of school was shelved forever.

Although what followed was pure anguish for Remziye, it also signalled total defeat for the family. Remziye refused to wear the voluminous outer garment known as the çarşaf and the family grew tired of beating her. They were perturbed by her stubbornness and, in the end, they decided to marry her off and pass the responsibility for her on to her husband. Remziye’s mother prepared a large pot of perde (curtain) pilav and invited all their relations for dinner. A sumptuous feast was laid before the men. The women crowded into the kitchen. They would have whatever was left over once the men had eaten their fill and left the table.

Remziye knew that perde pilav was fed to someone who was about to join the family through marriage. An oval pot is lined with a thick ‘curtain’ of flat yufka bread and, after the pilav has been prepared with almonds and shredded chicken, it is turned upside down and the first mouthful fed to the prospective bride. The pilav symbolises abundance, the almonds the bride bearing sons and the yufka curtain the keeping of the family’s secrets by those who are about to join it. But Remziye couldn’t se...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Introduction, by Joan Smith
• 1. Remziye
• 2. Hanim
• 3. Cavit Bey and Mehmet Sait
• 4. Nuran
• 5. Aysel
• 6. Naile
• 7. Nigar
• 8. Fadime and Yeter
• 9. Ulviye
• 10. Papatya
• Afterword
• Copyright