free law journal - volume 3, number 1 (18 january 2007)

FREE LAW JOURNAL - VOLUME 3, NUMBER 1 (18 JANUARY 2007)gather and decide whether the customary rules are violated by theact or not and what the sanction thereof shall be.The issue may be examined as a problem of the criminal law,because the activities of these counsels are considered as criminalin formal legal texts. But this is not the main point here. It must beseen that these unofficial counsels act effectively like a court eventhough they are disapproved and criminilized by the state’s legalsystem. These court-like bodies constituted in the social realitymake the situation to be worthy of being examined from the pointof view of sociological and anthropological studies. The aim of thisarticle is to discuss briefly the theoretical place of such kind ofevents with regard to the conceptual framework improved bysociology and anthropology of law. This is obviously a descriptivebut not a problem-solving perspective.KILLINGS BASED ON CUSTOM AS A PART OF SOCIALREALITYCommon PointsA review of exemplary events from three countries –Turkey,Pakistan and India–may help to illustrate the issue in question.“Her name is Hacer; she is 16. She asked for a love song tobe played on the radio on March 2, 1984. The same nightshe ran away from home, but she was quickly found bythe police who returned her to her father just like a parcel.She was brought home where her father and uncles weregathered, and she was locked in a small room while themale members of her family decided on her fate. Despiteher father’s objections, the decision was made that shemust be killed; otherwise, the rest of the family would notbe able to look others in the community in the eye. The22DR. SAIM ÜYE - ENFORCEMENT OF TRIBE’S LAW OR VIOLATIONOF STATE’S LAW? ON KILLINGS BASED ON CUSTOM