VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / September 2001Sev’er, Yurdakul / HONOR KILLINGS IN RURAL TURKEY Culture of Honor, Culture of Change A Feminist Analysis of Honor Killings in Rural Turkey

This article presents a feminist analysis of honor killings in rural Turkey. One of the main goals is to dissociate honor killings from a particular religious belief system and locate it on a continuum of patriarchal patterns of violence against women. The authors first pro-vide a summary of the defining characteristics of honor killings and discuss the circum-stances under which they are likely to occur. Second, they discuss modernization versus traditionalism in Turkey, emphasizing the contradictory forces in a culture of change. Third, they discuss conflict orientations in understanding violence against women, starting from some of the assertions and assumptions of the Marx/Engels hypothesis and socialist feminism, and comparing and contrasting the radical feminist orientation with the materialist orientation. Fourth, the authors give examples of honor killings in Turkey that have been recorded in recent years, specifically highlighting the common threads among these heinous crimes. The patterns observed are more supportive of the radical and socialist feminist orientations than the Marx/Engels hypothesis. The article ends with modest suggestions about breaking the cycle of violence against women, emphasizing the personal, social, structural, and global links in engendering positive change. The Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing (“Long Talks,” 1995) turned the global spotlight on a wide range of violence that women and girls suffer throughout the world and approved an Action Plan to enhance women’s status (Bunch & Frost, 1997). Unquestionably, one of the most extreme forms in the identified continuum of violence is honor killings. An honor killing1 is a generic term used to refer to the premeditated murder of preadolescent, adolescent, or adult women by one or more male 964 AUTHORS ’ NOTE: We wish to thank Vappu Tyyska and an anonymous reviewer for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this article. We are also grateful to th