Cyprus-Forum.com

[Paphitis]

Turkish girl ‘buried alive’ in family garden

by Jonathan Head BBC News

Turkish teenager found dead in a hole next to her house was probably buried alive, a post-mortem examination has revealed.

Medine Memi, 16, was found in the hole in December. Large amounts of soil were in her lungs and stomach, according to a source who has seen the report.

Her father and grandfather have been arrested, but not charged.

So-called “honour killings” take place every year in Turkey despite government moves to stamp out the practice.

Two months after police found Medine’s body buried in the garden of her family home, a team of doctors at a university in Malatya has completed the post-mortem examination.

According to a source who has seen their report, there was only minor bruising on her body, and no evidence of her being drugged.

Concrete covered

Her hands had been tied behind her back, and they discovered large amounts of soil in her lungs and stomach.

The autopsy has concluded that she was almost certainly buried alive.

The police went to her home after a neighbour reported that Medine had not been seen for a month.

They found her body in a hole, newly covered with concrete, next to the hen-house.

A local organisation that campaigns against honour killings said the victim, one of 10 children, had gone three times to the police to complain that she was being beaten, but she was sent back to her family each time.

A member of the organisation visited Medine’s mother a few days after her body was found, but she was too distraught to give them much information.

Conservative community

Medine, who had never been to school, lived in Kahta, a town in the mainly Kurdish south-east of Turkey, where most honour killings have taken place.

The town is known for being very conservative and religious; it is a stronghold of the once powerful Naksibendi Islamic sect, which was banned by modern Turkey’s founding father Ataturk in 1925 but has revived in recent years.

But while it is true that most such killings are carried out in conservative Muslim communities, the practice is linked more to the customs of this region of Turkey, than to religious belief.

When girls or women are deemed to have stained the family honour, by behaviour as innocent as simply talking to boys, there is strong peer pressure from the community on the male members of the family to restore their honour, say groups working on the issue in the south-east.

The only way allowed by their code is to kill the girl or woman – usually a young man is given the task after a family council meeting, and the method and location of the killing are discussed in detail.

Emotional state

Afterwards, the family will try to pretend she never existed.

The government has tried to curb the practice by changing the guidance given to judges.

In the case of honour killings they are no longer allowed to use mitigating factors like the accused’s emotional state to reduce sentences.

But this has so far had a limited impact.

According the statistics from the prime minister’s office, there were 16 honour killings in Medine’s province of Adiyaman between 2003 and 2007.

NGOs say the official figures are almost certainly too low.

Last year a Turkish man was sentenced to life imprisonment in London for the murder of his 15-year-old daughter a decade earlier. Her body has never been found.

[Linichka]

Religious or cultural in origin, these honor killings are monstrous. That Turkey does not choose to fully prosecute the murderers shows the country to be in the Dark Ages.

[Free Spirit]

And these people claim islam is a peaceful religion.

[miltiades]

Dark ages indeed . Let us not confuse the Turks with our T/C compatriots , two different cultures two different people.
This barbaric part of a culture that determines that the honour of a household rests between a woman's genitals must be eradicated form the world, alas too many third world countries condone such disgusting cultural events.

[Free Spirit]

It just goes to show how far they'll to satisfy male egos.

[Gasman]

What always astounds me is the number of ex pat Brits who have bought property in TRNC and who are claiming they welcome becoming part of Turkey and totally divorced from the RoC and the EU. When, presumably, Turkish law, customs and what have you, would apply?

Amazing what some people will agree to live with just so they can hang on to a cheapo villa?

I cannot help but wonder why these ex pat Brits who claim to love Turkey and all things Turkish so much didn't buy in TURKEY and not the TRNC in the first place.

And I assume (rightly or wrongly) that, like a lot of ex pat Brits who decided to leave the UK and live in the RoC, they did so because they had enjoyed holidays in Cyprus previously and loved the country. And lots of them will tell you the fact that almost all Cypriots speak English, road signs and menus and such are in English as well as Greek, they drive on the same side of the road etc. etc. etc.

None of which applies to Turkey, and very little of which now applies to Northern Cyprus as it becomes more and more 'Turkified'.

I can only think they started off considering Cyprus as their new (usually retirement) country and were wooed by Estate Agents into considering the North on account of the much cheaper property there and assurances that the North would also soon be in the EU and blah blah blah.