Killed by her brotherfor wanting freedom.

last updated 8 January 2015

Germany

Nikolaus Blome

The shocking case of Hatun Sürücü raises profound questions about cultural tolerance, says Nikolaus Blome in Hamburg’s Die Welt. The 23-year-old Turkish-born woman had run away from the husband her family had forced upon her, and was starting to enjoy the life of a Westernized German woman. But the fact that she had a job and wore Western clothes was anathema to her relations. So to save the family “honor,” her brother Ayhan shot her dead while she stood at a bus stop. He has been convicted and sentenced to nine years in jail, but the saga is not over. It now turns out that Hatun’s family is applying for custody of her young son. Yet where is the widespread revulsion at the very idea of letting the child grow up among the monsters implicated in his mother’s murder? Where are the displays of concern for the plight of Turkish girls, so many of whom are locked up, flogged, or given away to abusive husbands? Sadly, most Germans don’t take this issue seriously. Let’s not overreact, they say; honor killings are rare. In reality, there has been one a month in Berlin for the past half-year. The Sürücüs may live in the middle of Germany, but they are as “unreachable as if they were on another planet.” What we should be saying, but dare not, is that if they can’t live by our values, they have no business being here at all.