Unreported World: honour killings in Turkey

Last Friday Unreported World on Channel Four took the viewer to Turkey, to investigate why women are being killed to defend the honour of their husbands.  Reporter, Ramita Navai,  sensitively probed into this deeply rooted custom and found that her own roots in Iran, bordering Turkey, helped her to be accepted. The programme included interviews with women who had been threatened or who knew those who had been killed.  Also men were asked about the issue; they said that they would be willing to kill their wives or daughters and that a life without honour is not worth living.  Ramita Navai writes about the making of the film, Turkey: Killing for Honour, on the Channel Four website. 

More than 200 girls and women have been killed for this reason in Turkey in the past year.  In seeking to be accepted into the European Union the laws in Turkey now require a life sentence for honour killings.  There is a sinister new twist that now women are being forced to commit suicide to save the men from long prison terms for murder.

This Friday (3 April 2009) Unreported World was on: Sierra Leone: Insanity of War.  There will be more Unreported World investigations.  The series "looks at lives largely overlooked by the global news machine" as Channel Four's website says.