Death before Dishonour

It seems the Turkish government has just released a formal study of the problem of “honour killings”; something feminists have been raising a good deal of concern about.

And guess what? It turns out that 60 percent of all victims of honour killings are men (The New Anatolian, July 29-30, 2005). It is not a “women’s issue”—it is just that we never hear about it if it happens to a man.

It is also interesting to note that such killings are far more common in the modernized, Europeanized, relatively wealthy West of the country, and in the big cities of Istanbul and Izmir, than they are in the East or in poor rural areas.

Honour killings do not seem to be a standard feature of Turkish or of Muslim society, but a phenomenon of modernization. They are perhaps the result, firstly, of a clash between two value systems, and, secondly, of the relative anonymity, rootlessness, and lack of social support systems in the Westernized cities.

If so, the feminist call to “modernize” the laws of Islamic countries to change the traditional role of women might cause more deaths from honour killings, not fewer. In fact, that’s where I’d put my money.

Do feminists care?