Defining Recent Femicide in Modern Turkey: Revolt Killing

Abstract

This paper aims to question recent increasing femicides in Turkey through the examination of their reasons and dynamics. Therefore, it starts with analyzing current terms such as “honor killing”, “töre killing” and “crimes of passion”. The article claims that the recent description of the murder of women in Turkey as “honor killings” is misleading. Turkey must employ finer distinctions among types of femicide so as to prevent murderers and the larger society from justifying such actions through claims of honor. This paper thus asserts that the analysis of femicide in Turkey, as a Muslim country, should go far beyond the context of honor killing and argues that such examination must consider new social and economic changes as well as the new status of women in modern Turkish society. Thus, the article raises a new argument by suggesting a new term, “revolt killing”, for conceptualizing femicide in Turkey in tandem with recent social change and the increasing status of women. It argues that revolt killing is the concept of conflict between tradition and modernity, and it claims that recent increasing femicides in Turkey are closely related with the changing status of women towards modernity in contrast to the stability of men’s status in tradition.