By: Sara Azeez

A response to Honor, Elif Shafak

After finishing Honor by Elif Shafak, I ended up wondering if the Turkish community still struggles with honor killing or femicide in recent years, especially during Erdogan’s presidency. Honor killing is “the traditional practice in some countries of killing a family member who is believed to have brought shame on the family”. After googling Women's Rights in Turkey, the first headline on top of the search list was an article published by Equal Times Organization titled, Turkey Takes a Step Backward on Violence Against Women. The article mentions the struggle women face within Turkey from honor killing and the attacks on members of the LGBTQ community. It also mentions the increase in gender-based violence.

Although Honor was published in 2011, while the article was published in 2021, if the reader had to compare both, they would realize that honor killing cases increased, not the opposite. As in her other novels, Shafak highlights the struggle of women within Turkish society. Her character Pembe Kadar gives birth to a son Iskender who she is ery proud of, maybe because she is the son her mother failed to have or because the culture supports men no matter what while oppressing women. Pembe was killed by her son for having an affair, although she was divorced at the time, while his father was having an affair, while he was still married to Pembe but got away with it. Iskender was encouraged to kill his mother by another Turkish man who lived in the same city. The male characters of Elif’s story portray the male dominant Turkish society as supporting and encouraging honor killing and passing a toxic mentality to their youth.

In recent years, many activists expressed their concern about the high rate of femicide. According to the Guardian, 416 women were killed in 2021 and 72 murders were reported from January to March 2022. Those horrific cases happened during the presidency of Erdogan who advocated providing a safe for female rights and showed support for women by approving providing a separate space for women in buses, schools, and swimming pools to decrease the rate of sexual harassment. Recep Tayyip Erdogan became president in 2014, winning by having majority-female supporters - 55% of Erdogan’s votes were from women. One supporter told Al-Monitor “any woman who has attended an Erdogan rally knows that the probability of sexual harassment in the crowd is much less than with other parties because, here, women are respected.” But unfortunately, the increase in femicide and honor killing shows the opposite of what he promised. This is further demonstrated by Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention in 2021 because it allegedly caused a threat to “family values”, and support and accept the LGBTQ community.

Every couple of months, a case of honor killing appears in Turkish media and many express their rage while the government promises to grant justice to the dead. Yet, if one looks closer, many victims report the abusive behavior of their murderer but the government fails to provide protection. According to Human Rights Watch’s interview under the title of How Turkey’s Failure to Protect Women Can Cost Them Their Lives, the government claims to protect the victims by giving restriction orders to the abuser and shelters for the victims. Yet, it failed to give the safety Erdogan claimed, for example, in the case of Ayşe Tuba Arslan, who got divorced from her abusive partner. He was prosecuted for threatening to kill her, only to end up killing her three weeks afterward. Ayşe is one of the many victims who asked for protection but was let down by the authorities.

Abortion was legalized in Turkey back in 1983, but in recent years, women have struggled to get a clinical abortion. In a speech back in 2012, Erdogan claimed that abortion is no different from murdering an infant, quoting from his speech which is published by BBC in an article under the title of “Turkey PM Erdogan sparks row over abortion” he said:

"There is no difference between killing a baby in its mother's stomach and killing a baby after birth. I consider abortion to be murder. No one should have the right to allow this to happen."

His speech caused concern to many across the country; Amnesty International released a public statement, mentioning their concern about the statement which put the health of women and girls across the country at risk and limited their access to basic rights, causing women to have illegal abortions:

“Restrictions on access to abortion go against medical evidence and place the lives and health of women in Turkey at risk by forcing many who need abortions to seek illegal and therefore generally unsafe procedures. The World Health Organization has noted that the more restrictive legislation on abortion [is], the more likely abortion [is] to be unsafe and to result in death.” (11-15, Amnesty)

Although abortion remains legal, Erdogan’s 2012 speech has power to this day.  A study from 2012 showed that “as an individual's political ideology leans from the left to the right, support for abortion decreases consequentially.” according to the law for an under-age individual to get an abortion they need their parents' approval, but in most part of the country, especially in the districts, the young girls are forced by their parents to leave their education and get married to the child’s father even if he raped her. Medfeminiswiya mentioned in the article “Abortion in Turkey: Legally allowed but de facto banned” the case of 17 a years old who was raped by 5 men. After discovering later that she was 10 weeks pregnant, the survivor applied for legal abortion which was refused by the court. Research conducted by the author showed that just 10 out of a sample of 295 public hospitals offered abortions to the full extent provided for by the law.

Although Erdogan promised to give safety to women across his country, every day women are deprived of their basic rights. Erdogan publically encourages married couples to have children because it will create a “stronger nation” but perhaps he should be more concerned with the deep-rooted mentality of honor killing and femicide.