Honor killing is a silently practiced tradition far older than the advent of religion – be it Islam or Christianity. In many places it is part of a culture adopted as nonchalantly as smoking the Hashish or the Shish – aka Hukkah. It therefore transcends geographical boundaries – its manifestations zig zags demented minds embedded in time warps and unsettled trivialities. Whether it is South Asia, albeit Pakistan, India, Bangladesh or the once seat of Ottoman Empire – Constantinople aka Turkey, the news of an honor killing travels faster than the internet itself making each receiver of the news swallow his saliva as helplessly as gulping water out of thirst and thanking God that he or she was not the victim nor the perpetrator of the shameful act.
Until recently, honor killings have been largely confined to women in Turkey, who face being killed by male relatives for perceived grievances ranging from consensual sex outside of marriage to stealing a glance at a boy. A recent government survey estimated that one person dies every week in Istanbul as a result of honor killings, while the United Nations estimates the practice globally claims as many as 5,000 lives a year. In Turkey, relatives convicted in such killings are subject to life sentences. In south Asia invariably all escape the law or manage to pay off to go scot free.
But gay honor killings in Turkey remained underground because a homosexual not only brought shame to his family, but also tainted the concept of male identity upon which the community’s social structure depended.
“Until now, gay honor killings have been invisible because homosexuality is taboo,” a Turkish sociologist said.
However, the death of Ahmet Yildiz, a stocky and affable 26-year-old Turkish gay youth has brought the issue out on the surface invoking soul-searching as the New York Times article on this story commented.
Yildiz’s killing has underlined the tensions between the secular modern Turkey of cross-dressing pop stars and a more traditionalist Turkey, in which conservative Islam increasingly holds sway, observes the author of the article.
For Ahmet Yildiz, the choice to live openly as a gay man proved deadly when his own father hunted him down, traveling more than 600 miles from his hometown to shoot his son in an old neighborhood of Istanbul. It was honor killing Turkish style!
Yildiz was killed 16 months ago, in the first gay honor killing in Turkey to surface publicly. He was shot five times as he left his apartment to buy ice cream. A witness said dozens of neighbors watched the killing from their windows, but refused to come forward. His body remained unclaimed by his family, a grievous fate under Muslim custom.
His father, Yahya Yildiz, whose trial in absentia began in September this year, is on the run and believed to be hiding in northern Iraq.
Yildiz was the only son of a deeply religious and wealthy Kurdish family from Sanliurfa, in the predominantly Kurdish southeast. He was a straight-A physics student who had hoped to become a teacher, was tutoring fellow students so he could make extra money to live independently. But by coming out as gay in a patriarchal tribal family, he had become the ultimate affront to both religious and filial honor, even with parents who adored him.
“Ahmet’s father had warned him to return to their village and to see a doctor and imam in order to cure him of his homosexuality and get married, but Ahmet refused,” his cousin Kaya said. “Ahmet loved his family more than anything else and he was tortured about disappointing them. But in the end, he decided to be who he was.” (MAMOSA)
For more on this story go to: Soul-Searching in Turkey After a Gay Man Is Killed – NYT
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