FIFTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE EU TURKEY AND THE KURDS

FIFTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE EU, TURKEY AND THE KURDS
open accession negotiations, there was a marked increase in human rights violations
in Diyarbakır and the surrounding provinces. 185
Honour killings where the woman was seen to have transgressed her customary, socially
defined role continue to occur with a culture of impunity protecting the murderers.
In June 2006, the Diyarbakır Bar Association’s Women’s Rights Centre stated
that honour killings had claimed the lives of 50 women in the past six years in the
south-east region of Turkey.
In the sphere of women’s rights the 2006 Penal Code contained some more positive
developments, particularly given the deeply chauvinistic nature of the 2003
draft which criminalised adultery and did not adequately punish honour killings.
Characterisations of offences committed against women based on patriarchal notions
of chastity, ‘honour’ and shame have been replaced with definitions based on
international human rights norms and recognition of women’s bodily integrity and
sexual rights. Sexual crimes were denoted as crimes against the individual rather than
crimes against society, marital rape was criminalised and rape was no longer legitimised
where the perpetrator married the victim. These changes came about following
a constructive and sustained campaign by women’s rights groups in Turkey to
incorporate a gender perspective into criminal law, which was much to the credit of
the burgeoning Turkish women’s movement.
However, the 2006 code continued to refer to ‘custom killings’ rather than honour
killings. It remains unclear whether this term covers all murders committed according
to ‘honour’ codes and still allows the potential for legal justification for those
committed in the name of honour. In addition, ‘genital examinations’ could be carried
out if necessary for public health or, at the behest of a court, if required for the
investigation of a crime. No requirement that the woman’s consent must first be attained
had been stipulated. These highly invasive and discriminatory examinations
have been used as a means of controlling female sexual relations, because pre-marital
virginity is customarily seen as critical to a woman’s ‘honour’.
The Commission’s 2008 Turkey Progress Report notes that the ‘legal framework guaranteeing
women’s rights and gender equality is broadly in place’ 186 . However, the
implication of the report is that this is yet to have a transformative impact on the
position of women within Turkish society.
The government of Turkey does appear to have been trying to address the problem of
the implementation gap between the legal status of women and their actual position.
185 Diyarbakır branch of the Human Rights Association (İHD) Report, 2005.
186 European Commission 2008 Progress Report, 5 November 2008, SEC (2008) 2699, p.21
186