My Feature: What is the Color of Honor?

What is the Color of “Honor”?

By Emine Dilek

WVoN co-editor

Medine Mehmi was a 16-year-old girl who was buried alive under a chicken coop in Adiyaman* because she was “befriending” boys.

Her father and grandfather decided that their family’s “honor” was stained by her behavior. Her life was the price she had to pay.

As in most countries where honor killings go on, there are laws in place in Turkey to protect women, but they are not enforced and even if they were, families know how to get round them.

Many of these murders are kept secret, underreported and underestimated. A woman is murdered without a name and a gravestone, every minute of every day.

A girl is poisoned, stabbed, hanged, beheaded, burned, stoned or buried alive, every minute of every day, somewhere. “Honor” is worth more than her little life.

I could give you endless statistics and describe in detail here how girls and women murdered in the name of “honor” are abused under a banner of “dignity” and “tradition.”  

But one is too many. One is enough to cry out and scream - stop! Medine Mehmi is another one too many!

I grew up in Turkey, dark tea, warm bread, mountains and the Aegean Sea. And with the women, like secrets, sins, bitter sweet, with big black eyes, small chins, quiet and doleful.

They are also smart, frugal, modest, and beautiful. Great mothers, better wives, best friends; but always belonged to others, other then themselves.

Owned and purchased, sold like commodities, like cattle. They were also carriers of “honor,” custodian of the family’s dignity.

But the concept of “honor” in my country is lost in translation. Honor is an active verb in Turkish, something you do, achieve, hold. One does not live with “honor,” one carries it, works for it and shares it. It is a systemic disease mix of custom and confusion.

 

Being born a girl, and surviving it, is nothing short of a miracle if you are born in Asia, the Middle East or Africa, and especially if you were born into a Muslim family.

But it’s not just about religion.

“Honor” killings go on in Christian and Hindu communities too; but Iraqi Kurds, Palestinians in Jordan, Pakistan and Turkey are the worst offenders.

Yes, I can sugar-coat it and say, “Oh, it only happens in the rural areas, and Turkish women are mostly modern and educated and advanced,” but this would do nothing to heal the bleeding wound.

An artery is cut, blood is all over, and I can’t bring myself to think my arms and legs are working so forget the injury. I can’t ignore it.  

I really would like to see this precious “honor” once. What color is it? How does it smell? Sound?

Obviously it must sound better than a girl’s giggle, or the milky smell of a baby girl. It must be stronger than the bond between a father and his daughter,and more powerful than love. Sounds awfully similar to the other “h” word, doesn’t it? Hate.

So what needs to change?

What needs to change are wrong, outdated patriarchal tendencies, the definition of “girl”, “honor” and “love.”

What needs to change is the idea that a girl is less valuable than an ox or a goat or a horse. Having a vagina and a couple of breasts does not automatically make us less than  human. Men’s consciences, entire societies, beliefs, traditions, dogmas, tenets, these are what need to change.

It’s a tall order, I know. ,But when fathers start to smile at the first sight of their baby daughters, when the men start to think may be, just may be, this human being deserves to have a life and to keep her life regardless of her gender, we will proceed to a better world.

Like the old French proverb said “Hope is the dream of a soul awake.” 

Adiyaman* is a city in the Eastern Anatolian region of Turkey

 This feature has been published in The Vibe UK, Women's Views on News, w.e.a Women at Work, The New Agenda and Amazing Women Rock.