Turkey |
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Families seeking retaliation in feud find it hard to bury the hatchet
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| 1. |
15 Apr 2008 Tue 02:27 am |
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One of the greatest problems of the southeastern and eastern regions of Turkey, blood feuds between families, has been brought to the western parts of the country and even to Europe by increased migration.
Blood feuds are chains of revenge murders between two families that might start over the smallest of conflicts and continue for decades. As an example, an interfamily conflict in Mersin that left five people dead only last week had a history reaching back two decades.
http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=139054
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| 2. |
15 Apr 2008 Tue 03:31 am |
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Quoting Roswitha: One of the greatest problems of the southeastern and eastern regions of Turkey, blood feuds between families, has been brought to the western parts of the country and even to Europe by increased migration.
Blood feuds are chains of revenge murders between two families that might start over the smallest of conflicts and continue for decades. As an example, an interfamily conflict in Mersin that left five people dead only last week had a history reaching back two decades.
http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=139054 |
OMG!!! This is so messed up...    Interesting article Roswitha, thank you! 
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| 3. |
15 Apr 2008 Tue 03:43 am |
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I read an article last week in Hurriyet about a blood feud muder in Antalya. Kurdish family that had moved there from the east trying to escape a blood feud. They had boys under 18 do the shooting so that they would get lesser sentences for murder. But under new laws, the elders will get the same punishment for ordering the murders as if they fired the guns themselves.
Unbelievable that this can still happen and people think this way in 21st century.
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| 4. |
15 Apr 2008 Tue 05:56 am |
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Yeah... pretty unbelievable. Although on the positive side, Turkey is at least I think looking at it as a problem, while in some other countries most people see it as a good, normal thing... :-S
I heard/read that the same thing happens for "honor" killings - the family makes a child do it so that they get a lesser punishment. I hope the laws will also apply in this situation and punish the adults who are supposedly responsible for the kid as if they themselves committed the crime.
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| 5. |
15 Apr 2008 Tue 07:47 am |
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The frightening thing is that your life can get completely messed up because of something your second cousin's wife's brother did.
The whole family (i.e. not just the close family but up to 50 or 60 people) may have to move to a completely diferent part of the country to try to escape.
I have a British friend whose Turkish friend's son went out wih a gang 2 weeks ago, and a boy got killed. Now all the families of the gang members are terrified and are discussing whether they need to move to another province.
It all stems from not being able to trust the police and the judicial system, so you take justice into your own hands. I loved the UK series Judge John Deed, not just because of Martin Shaw (!) but because it explored just these very issues in a "developed" nation context.
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| 6. |
15 Apr 2008 Tue 07:53 am |
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Quoting catwoman: Yeah... pretty unbelievable. Although on the positive side, Turkey is at least I think looking at it as a problem, while in some other countries most people see it as a good, normal thing... :-S
I heard/read that the same thing happens for "honor" killings - the family makes a child do it so that they get a lesser punishment. I hope the laws will also apply in this situation and punish the adults who are supposedly responsible for the kid as if they themselves committed the crime. |
Cat, yes part of the thinking is that the kids get less punishment. But Ros's article was part 2. The original reporting was in Sunday's Zaman. The most striking sentence of the original article for me (as it was something I hadn't picked up on before) said that sons are encouraged to do the crimes, as that is the only way the philosophy can be passed on to the next generation.
It also explained the, to me terrifying, instances of mothers who every day for 10 years or so laid an empty place at their husbands seat at the table, to remind their young sons they had a duty to exact revenge. Or the mothers who kept the blood stain clothes, and brought them out every year on birthdays and anniversaries to remind.
"The hand that rocks the cradle rules the grave": how awful that this type of hatred is encouraged by mothers. The reconciler who was interviewed in the article said often the fueds only end when he gets the mother to relinquish her requirement on her sons that they exact revenge. Wow.
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| 7. |
15 Apr 2008 Tue 08:35 am |
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Thanks Marion for more insight into this problem. It's soooo unbelievably horrifying. One would think that a normal person would not be able to do anything like that... :-S 
I think this is really a pre-civilization type of behavior when there was no judicial system that would punish criminals. However, this whole generation to generation revenge mindset is still hard to understand. :-S
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| 8. |
15 Apr 2008 Tue 04:44 pm |
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Blood feuds can be found not only in Turkey, also during the earlier settlement days in the USA.
http://www.blueridgecountry.com/hatmac/hatmac.html
Eyewitness: Albania's blood feuds
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1964397.stm
The Macedonian Movie "Odmazda/Osveta"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGbxQCDYaoU
Blood feuds trap 1,200 Albanian youths at home
The ancient tradition of blood-feuds is trapping Albanian men inside their own homes, living women to fend for the family
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article3216606.ece
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/03/wfeud03.xml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4273020.stm
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