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NY Times, November 26, 2009 Soul-Searching in Turkey After a Gay Man Is Killed By DAN BILEFSKY ISTANBUL — For Ahmet Yildiz, a stocky and affable 26-year-old, the choice to live openly as a gay man proved deadly. Prosecutors say his own father hunted him down, traveling more than 600 miles from his hometown to shoot his son in an old neighborhood of Istanbul. Mr. Yildiz was killed 16 months ago, the victim of what sociologists say is 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, is on the run and believed to be hiding in northern Iraq. The case, which has caused a bout of national soul-searching, 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. Ahmet Kaya, Ahmet Yildiz’s cousin, said Mr. Yildiz was the only son of a deeply religious and wealthy Kurdish family from Sanliurfa, in the predominantly Kurdish southeast. Mr. Kaya said Mr. Yildiz, 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,” Mr. 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.” That clash of values permeates Turkish society. While Turkey’s aspiration to join the European Union is pushing the Muslim-inspired government to accept and even promote civil liberties for women and homosexuals, some traditionalists remain ill at ease with a permissive attitude toward sexuality and gender roles. Until recently, so-called honor killings have been largely confined to women, 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. A sociologist who studies honor killings, Mazhar Bagli, at Dicle University in Diyarbakir, the largest city in the southeast, noted that tribal Kurdish families that kill daughters perceived to have dishonored them publicize the murders to help cleanse their shame. But he said gay honor killings 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,” he said. Gay rights groups argue that there is an increasingly open homophobia in Turkey. The military, which is the guardian of Turkey’s secular state, regards homosexuality as a disorder. Last year, a local Istanbul court ruled in favor of disbanding the offices of Lambda, the country’s leading gay rights group, after a complaint that it offended public morality. (The decision was later overturned by a higher court.) Firat Soyle, a human rights lawyer for Lambda, who was advising Mr. Yildiz before his death, said that three months before the murder, Mr. Yildiz had filed a complaint at the local prosecutor’s office that he was receiving death threats from his family. Mr. Soyle said the prosecutor’s office had refused to investigate or provide Mr. Yildiz with protection. The local police and prosecutors declined to comment on the allegation because the case was continuing. The murder has divided Mr. Yildiz’s neighbors in Uskudar, an old Ottoman district on the Bosporus in Istanbul where secular and religious Turks live side by side. Ummuhan Darama, a neighbor of Mr. Yildiz, was shot in the ankle during the attack and has filed criminal charges against his father. She said that the police had visited her in the hospital after the episode, urging her to drop the charges and to avoid becoming involved in what they called a “dirty crime.” Ms. Darama, a religious Muslim who wears a gold satin head scarf, said she was the only one among her neighbors willing to testify. “The police and local religious officials are trying to protect the killer because they think homosexuality is a sin,” she said. “But in Islam killing is an even bigger sin, and no one but Allah has the right to decide between life and death. Ahmet was a nice, gentle boy and he didn’t deserve to die.” But Kemal, 55, a Kurdish man newly arrived to the district from the southeast who declined to give his last name, said he would disown his son if he found out he was gay. “I would kick him out of the house and he would no longer be my son,” he said, fingering his prayer beads. Even as some gay groups have sought to blame encroaching Islamic conservatism for Mr. Yildiz’s death, others argue that Turkish society is actually becoming more sexually liberated. Nilufer Narli, a sociologist who has studied gender issues, noted that gay clubs and gay bars have proliferated in big cities like Istanbul. She said homosexuality in Turkey had been tolerated since Ottoman times. One of Turkey’s most celebrated singers is Bulent Ersoy, a transsexual, who was banned by the military government in the 1980s but has since become more popular as a woman than she was as a man. “It is a cliché that Turkey is homophobic,” Ms. Narli said. “There has been a rise in religious conservatism, but at the same time, because of globalization, people are more accepting now of different values than they have ever been.” That acceptance, however, has not always filtered down to Turkey’s religious heartland, with sometimes deadly consequences. Didar Erdal, a 23-year-old gay man from Mr. Yildiz’s hometown, recently fled Istanbul for the Netherlands out of fear that his own family was hunting him. Mr. Erdal said his family had learned he was gay last month after he applied for an exemption from military service on the grounds of his sexuality. He said his father had gone “crazy” and ordered him home, where the tribe’s elders would decide his fate. “I know all too well,” Mr. Erdal said, “what the tradition demands must happen to me.” ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
