The History of Sex: Istanbul -- 'Disobedient Women Should be Punished' -- (Chap. II, Pt. 11)

Despite Turkey's paper protection of women's rights, so-called 'honor killings' still haunt the country—and Muslim communities throughout Europe.

A parliamentary investigation in 2006 documented 1,091 of these murders in Turkey over a five-year period, though the true number may be much higher, even after recent legal reforms to lengthen prison terms.

'Honor killings' are still legal in neighboring Iran:
women are buried, then stoned

'Now that the penal code has been changed, the families try to force the women to commit suicide instead,' says Canan Arin, a lawyer who opened Istanbul's first women's shelter back in 1995.

Speaking to me in her study on the European side of Istanbul, with books lining the shelves and jazz burbling in the background, she tells me that one of the main barriers to securing convictions for 'honor killings' is that many judges come from traditional backgrounds.

'Deep down, they think that disobedient women should be punished and the penalty should be death.'

DON'T CALL IT A CRUSADE

To overcome the honor problem, some reformers have tried to rename murders 'traditional killings.'

But Ms. Arin argues that this change is more for male politicos than female victims; the root problem is that women's honor is treated as a commodity. If a girl has sex outside marriage—even if she's raped—'her uncleanliness is a stain on the family honor:' 'Honor is represented by women, so politicians can't openly say they're against honor.'

Like many of her allies, however, she's reluctant to make a link between Islam and the oppression of women—after all, the reports that call her a 'crusader' for women's rights are just an awkward reminder that modern feminism is a Western import (like the Crusades, derived from the Latin for 'Cross').

Instead, Ms. Arin takes refuge in a relativistic stance. 'It is difficult for all patriarchal systems and patriarchal men to accept the need for women's rights. We are living in a man's world, and Turkish men are no different from that.'

'But isn't the problem that Western-style reforms inevitably increase secularization?' I ask.

'Turkey should increase secularization,' she counters adamantly, echoing the outspoken atheist I met at Topkapi Palace. 'We need more secularization, and religion should be entirely personal.'

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