Cyprus-Forum.com

[eracles]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21774034/
An article from our friends at the FT. Minor point: Northern Cyprus never was in the fold - how can it be bought back?
He insinuates that the north will become involved in terror unless they are bought into the west.
He says that if TCs were enabled to be as rich as the GCs they would be more inclined to reunite.
My view is that if they were on a similar economic footing there would be absolutely no way that the TCs (inc settler majority) would want to reunite. Not without even more disporportionate requests aimed at subjugating a GC majority.

Anyway - one thing that always strikes me on this forum. A TC will go on about the isolation but when a GC says 'look at how bad life is over there' there is always a response about 'how more new mercedes get sold in the TRNC than in Germany' or whatever....

[oranos64]

even more evidence of bodies within the E.U echoing what i have been saying all along ...E.U membership and aid to the NORTH ...followed by a sweetner to both sides ....

[miltiades]

Maybe such barbaric events will reach Cyprus one day:
How to Avoid Honor Killing in Turkey? Honor Suicide

By DAN BILEFSKY, The New York Times

BATMAN, Turkey (July 16) -- For Derya, a waiflike girl of 17, the order to kill herself came from an uncle and was delivered in a text message to her cellphone. “You have blackened our name,” it read. “Kill yourself and clean our shame or we will kill you first.”



Lynsey Addario, Corbis
A father near Batman, Turkey, shows a photo of his 14-year-old daughter who recently committed suicide.

Talk About It: Post Thoughts


Derya said her crime was to fall for a boy she had met at school last spring. She knew the risks: her aunt had been killed by her grandfather for seeing a boy. But after being cloistered and veiled for most of her life, she said, she felt free for the first time and wanted to express her independence.

When news of the love affair spread to her family, she said, her mother warned her that her father would kill her. But she refused to listen. Then came the threatening text messages, sent by her brothers and uncles, sometimes 15 a day. Derya said they were the equivalent of a death sentence.

Consumed by shame and fearing for her life, she said, she decided to carry out her family’s wishes. First, she said, she jumped into the Tigris River, but she survived. Next she tried hanging herself, but an uncle cut her down. Then she slashed her wrists with a kitchen knife.

“My family attacked my personality, and I felt I had committed the biggest sin in the world,” she said recently from a women’s shelter where she had traded in her veil for a T-shirt and jeans. She declined to give her last name for fear that her family was still hunting her. “I felt I had no right to dishonor my family, that I have no right to be alive. So I decided to respect my family’s desire and to die.”


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Every few weeks in Batman and the surrounding area in southeast Anatolia, which is poor, rural and deeply influenced by conservative Islam, a young woman tries to take her life. Others have been stoned to death, strangled, shot or buried alive. Their offenses ranged from stealing a glance at a boy to wearing a short skirt, wanting to go to the movies, being raped by a stranger or relative or having consensual sex.

Hoping to join the European Union, Turkey has tightened the punishment for attacks on women and girls who have had such experiences. But the violence has continued, if by different means: parents are trying to spare their sons from the harsh punishments associated with killing their sisters by pressing the daughters to take their own lives instead.

“Families of disgraced girls are choosing between sacrificing a son to a life in prison by designating him to kill his sister or forcing their daughters to kill themselves,” said Yilmaz Akinci, who works for a rural development group. “Rather than losing two children, most opt for the latter option.”

Women’s groups here say the evidence suggests that a growing number of girls considered to be dishonored are being locked in a room for days with rat poison, a pistol or a rope, and told by their families that the only thing resting between their disgrace and redemption is death.

Batman (pronounced bot-MON) is a grim and dusty city of 250,000 people where religion is clashing with Turkey’s official secularism. The city was featured in the latest novel by the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, “Snow,” which chronicled a journalist’s investigation of a suicide epidemic among teenage girls.

In the past six years, there have been 165 suicides or suicide attempts in Batman, 102 of them by women. As many as 36 women have killed themselves since the start of this year, according to the United Nations. The organization estimates that 5,000 women are killed each year around the world by relatives who accuse them of bringing dishonor on their families; the majority of the killings are in the Middle East.

Last month, the United Nations dispatched a special envoy to Turkey to investigate. The envoy, Yakin Erturk, concluded that while some suicides were authentic, others appeared to be “honor killings disguised as a suicide or an accident.”

“The calls keep coming,” said Mehtap Ceylan, a member of Batman’s suicide prevention squad. She said she had very recently received a call about a 16-year-old girl who had committed suicide, her family said, because they would not let her wear jeans. But when Ms. Ceylan visited the house, neighbors told her the girl had been a happy person and had been wearing jeans for years.

“The story just doesn’t add up,” Ms. Ceylan said. “The girl’s family says their daughter was eating breakfast, walked into the next room and put a gun to her head. They were acting as if nothing had happened.”

Let us hope that our T/C compatriots NEVER accept such vile acts in the name of ""Honour "" !!!

[phoenix]

Reeks of hypocrisy.

We are not the nannies of the TCs.

Why should the RoC bail them out just because they have spent all they stole and now are poorer? If they were doing well, I would bet they would have taken over the whole island and obliterated the GCs completely.

Just because they only average half the income the GCs earn is no reason to give them recognition. They are still doing much better on the backs of the GCs than they would have done if they lived in Turkey . . . .

And do they ever say thanks?

They should send the Turkish army home first before begging to be taken back into the folds of civilisation and its economic benefits.

[miltiades]

Does any Turkish Cypriot justify this vile acts. I THINK NOT ! NOT ONE , Well maybe VP BUT SURELY NOBODY ELSE. Is this is disgusting , to think that in the 21st century such attitudes exist its scary. A father killing his child , a brother killing a sister , he can go out and have a good time but it appears only with mules not Turkish women .How abhorrent !!
Frontline: Suicide For Honour
13/11/2007


By Yael Lavie, Sky News Senior Middle East Producer, in south east Turkey.



"They told me that there is a gun in the house. They said: 'We are going to kill you tonight. You have seen how we killed your sister in law. You will die the same way.'"

Aisha had every reason to believe her husband's family when they said that. She had witnessed her sister in law killed a few years back.

Her crime was being the target of harassing phone calls by her husband's cousin.

He claimed to have fallen in love with her. Although she had not returned his affection and even complained about it to the family, they decided she had to die: what may seem absurd to westerners is, in South-East Turkey, a reality.

Telling her story in a Diyarbakir women's shelter called 'Kamer', Aisha - we are not revealing her real name - now smiles.

It is in the past and she has survived it. She fled that night and eventually found her way to Kamer. The women's organization began a slow and dangerous process of negotiating between Aisha and her family to ensure her life.

Luckily for Aisha her husband was supportive. Her life was spared, providing both she and her husband left the village.

If they were to return it is doubtful Aisha would last a day.

If they knew she had talked to the press she would also be in danger again.

Few women are as lucky as Aisha in South East Turkey.

Honour crimes have long been a common practice in this part of the world.

Recently they have evolved in a disturbing way. To help its application to join the EU, Turkey tightened laws against honour killings.

But that caused a different problem: a rise in honour suicides. To avoid being punished, families are forcing women to kill themselves.

The problem for Turkish authorities investigating honour suicides is that they are cloaked in a centuries old code of secrecy - as was the case for Halimeh Baytkin, an 18 year old girl who was found dead in a poor neighbourhood of Diyarbakir in 2005.

We tracked down her uncle who gave her family's version of events: she watched television, got depressed and killed herself he told us.

Authorities believe her family forced her to kill herself because she had dishonoured them simply by having a boyfriend. But noone has been prosecuted for her death.

Many honour crimes are punishment for trivial 'offences' such as wearing jeans, talking to a boy or even being looked at by a man in a wrong way.

Women's groups say three or four women die in suspicious circumstances every month in south east Turkey, and those are only the cases that are reported.

The Turkish government claims it is cracking down on honour crimes under pressure from Europe to improve human rights, but it may take decades to overcome this ancient bloody tradition.

At the moment there's strong evidence their efforts are being tragically counterproductive.""""

CYPRUS FOR EVER !!!

[zan]

I do love a balanced argument What a stupid question to ask Miltiades.....Do we condemn killing Every fucking one of us. All the civilised people in Turkey and you come out with racist remarks like that...


Do you condemn this????

A bad year for women?
By Jacqueline Theodoulou
Is domestic violence on the rise, or have Cypriot men always been violently jealous?

THIS year has been a bad one for women in Cyprus, with an alarming number of rapes, beatings and murders grabbing the headlines.

And with incidents of domestic violence noting a worrying rise, activists say it is high time something is done about the issue.

The European Union is moving in the right direction, currently organising a two-year campaign to battle violence against women, a programme Cyprus is actively participating in.

Domestic violence is one of the island’s social stigmas, with the majority of victims being women, though a small percentage have also been men and children.

According to police statistics, there was a significant increase in domestic violence in the year 2005 compared to the four years beforehand.

In 2005, 940 incidents of domestic violence were reported to police, compared to the previous year’s 505 and 2003’s 623.

Out of 2005’s cases, 731 concerned physical violence, 189 psychological violence and 20 involved sexual abuse.

Overall, from 2001 until 2005, 80.15 per cent of cases involved physical violence. Also in that five-year period, 73.13 per cent of victims of domestic violence were women, while 15.68 per cent were men and 11.19 per cent were children.

There are currently no statistics available for the year 2006, although the Association for the Prevention and Handling of Violence in the Family said a total of 92 victims had sought refuge with them this year so far.

Back in August, the Domestic Violence Centre confirmed more victims of domestic violence had started speaking out and asking for help, although current records in no way mirrored the reality of the situation.

Psychiatrist Dr Yiangos Mikellides says domestic violence is not a recent phenomenon, with the figures reflecting a rise in the reporting of incidents. He told the Sunday Mail that the rate of wife killings in Cyprus had been steady for the past 50 years and that it was all due to the “paranoid jealousy” of Cypriots.

“Cypriots are jealous people; men are insanely jealous of their wives. They have their wives followed. They want to know where they were, who they were with, what they were doing…
“This is not normal behaviour, these people are sick and they need treatment”.

Fifty per cent of men who beat and kill their wives are alcoholics, the psychiatrist added.

“Nothing can be done about it; apart from locking all these men in a tank full of water or feeding them with mental illness pills.”

Mikellides listed one of the reasons for this phenomenon in Cyprus is that men avoid seeking psychological help for their problems.

“There are so many men in Cyprus suffering from this insane jealousy but they refuse to seek help from doctors.

“These men need to realise that this is not a matter of being macho, it’s a matter of madness. Only mad people feel these intense feelings.”

He continued, “Every year there are one or two murders that are a result of domestic violence and it has remained at this steady rate for the past 50 years.

“If you personally know someone who is violent towards their wife or other half, it means there is a problem.”

Roulla Mavronicola, a deputy for coalition party EDEK and member of the House Gender Equality Committee, recently attended a European Commission conference in Strasburg, which hailed the beginning of a two-year Pan-European campaign concerning domestic violence and violence against women in general.

The EC’s Gender Equality Committee had invited representations from all member states to discuss the organisational side of the campaign, which will officially begin on November 24.

All countries agreed to discuss the campaign with their parliamentary committees and committed to inform the EC on the strategy they would use.

Various non-governmental and women’s rights’ organisations also attended the conference, while the involvement of municipal authorities in the campaign is considered of vital importance.

“Violence against women is developing into a tragic social phenomenon, which unfortunately is taking place behind closed doors,” said Mavronicola.

“The fear and silence that is imposed upon women will not allow the problem to be seen in its true dimensions; a problem that also touches children as the innocent victims of violence against women and the family,” she added.

During the conference, Mavronicola stressed the need for women in Cyprus to become acquainted with their rights and suggested the creation of steady values within society through lectures aimed at schools, police and the army.

She informed the EC on existing legislation in Cyprus regarding the handling of violence against women and expressed the island’s readiness to amend the law if necessary.

“We also took on the commitment to send our action plan as soon as possible,” Mavronicola said.

Crimes against women in 2006
l The murder of 20-year-old Janka Kovacova in August, who was found buried in a shallow grave after being abducted, raped and murdered. The man who allegedly confessed to the crime is in remand awaiting trial.
l The murder of 30-year-old Anna Vasileva from Kyrgyzstan, whose bones were discovered charred inside a barrel. The discovery sparked suspicions of a brutal double murder by Vasileva’s husband, 29-year-old Christoforos Charalambous, who had previously admitted to stabbing his wife’s lover Yiannos Demosthenous in Nicosia. Charalambous is also in police custody awaiting trial.
l Most recently, the murder of 41-year-old Roulla Panteli, whose body was found on October 15 by a hunter in a remote area of Limassol. The woman, who had been missing for two weeks, had been shot twice in the back of the head. Her 45-year-old ex-boyfriend, Christakis Gavriel, is in remand on suspicion of the murder.
l A man stabbed and severely injured his English Cypriot girlfriend Georgina Georgiou in a blazing row in Deftera on August 29. Georgina had only moved in with her boyfriend two weeks earlier.
l A Polish man was jailed for four months for beating up his wife and tying her up naked in their home in Evrychou. The reason? He had come home and found she had not cooked dinner because she was too drunk.
l Last month, a police constable appeared in court for allegedly punching and kicking his wife in a vicious attack while still holding his nine-month-year-old daughter in his free arm.

Copyright © Cyprus Mail 2007

[utu]

These so-called 'Honor Killings' are a blight on Turkey. In these cases, the entire family should be held responsible.

[zan]

These so-called 'Honor Killings' are a blight on Turkey. In these cases, the entire family should be held responsible.

These cases are not taken lightly utu......There is a vast chasm in parts of Turkey of cultural problems and those that break the law are arrested like in any other civilised country. They are on the news on a daily basis and are used as deterrents and education purposes. It is not like it is allowed in Turkey as some would have you believe. Just like murder rape and all the other things that go on all over the world.

[miltiades]

Zan , you know me well enough I think . I condemn all senseless violent acts especially those acts that are a direct result of attitudes that belong to the dark ages. It unfortunate that in some parts of Turkey honour killings , which are barbaric to say the least , still occur. Such acts are prevalent in the M.East , Jordan being one of the worst offenders. I KNOW THAT NO T/C condones such acts I'm questioning the influence of the new comers to Cyprus with a culture not that distant from those committing such vile acts.
Violence against women is a disgrace for any nation but it is a fact that it does happen .
Your comparisons on violence against women in Cyprus does not stand up as a logical analogy with honour killings committed by father against daughter , brother against sister for the crime of smiling at a man. You know that in some parts of Turkey in most of the M.East the honour of a household rests comfortably between a woman's legs , dare she open them or have them FORCIBLY OPENED and bang , the Honour has gone ! What medieval beliefs.

[humanist]

50% of women in Germany reporting that they have experenced domestic violence have a Turkish background. This is rather a large number of wormn facing domestic violence. 75% of those 50% of Turkish background women have expressed physcal abuse.

I do not condemn this,