A Bleeding Sin: An Examination of Honor Killings in Turkey and Germany (2011)

Undergraduate: Bethany Corbin

Faculty Advisor: Banu Gokariksel
Department: International & Area Studies

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Honor killing – the murder of a woman by her family for causing dishonor – is a form of global femicide that invokes the notion of honor as motivation for domestic violence. As evidenced by international discourses following 9/11, honor killings have assumed a more “ethnicized” tone, constructed as a crime that occurs only in Muslim religious and ethnic communities. Muslim women have thus been problematically construed within public consciousness, and are surrounded by a discourse of fear due to their perception as alien. This research examines how the categorizations of honor killings in Turkey and Germany advance each nation’s political agendas, and incorporates an examination of the laws and societal structures that enable honor killings to recur without harsh punishment. The goal of this research is not only to explain transnational honor killing portrayal, but to also assert that honor killings create an informal outlet to discuss and construct those deemed fundamentally “other”.