As part of the routine March 8 International Women’s Day celebrations, the Turkish media remembered an otherwise often-ignored tragedy of women in rural parts of Turkey by highlighting the story of 17-year-old Lalihan from Batman. On the day women were singing and celebrating the International Women’s Day in squares of Ankara, Istanbul and İzmir with demands for wider rights and increased participation in politics for the Turkish women, a group of people were silently lowering the dead body of Lalihan to the bosom of mother earth with a simple religious ceremony in Batman.

She lived without becoming either an individual or indeed a citizen of the country she was born to as her parents never ever registered her… The only proof that a person named Lalihan ever lived in these lands was her dead body which was buried on March 8. As in “Yaşar, ne yaşar ne yaşamaz” (Yaşar, neither lives nor does not live) famous short story by Aziz Nesin, “she neither lived, nor did not live” but definitely was killed or made a victim of a rather primitive tradition.

Berdel, barter of brides!

Her family had agreed with another family in their neighborhood to exchange brides… A tradition called “Berdel…” The two families were indeed the families of two brothers. Marriages within the same families have been long discouraged by the state, but who cared what the state said? The girls and boys intended to be married had grown up together like brothers and sisters… They did not want to marry a brother or sister… The elders of the families of the two brothers simply did not bother. They wanted the daughters and sons of two brothers to marry and thus avoid dividing the family’s land allowing it to fall into the hands of outsiders.

It was a good arrangement… So thought the elders of the clan! After all, Lalihan’s elder brother was willing to marry his niece, and his cousin, Abdurrahman İlhan, was willing to marry Lalihan! Girls had no other option but to obey the wishes of the boys, and the clan… Otherwise, it would have been a grave insult to the “honor of the family” and the clan if the girls objected to their arrangement to be brides… A crime punishable by death!

Lalihan could not understand how she could become wife to Abdurrahman, whom she grew up playing and working with in the family fields as sister and brother. She objected. Trying to explain to her elder brother, she could not. Trying to explain to her mother, she could not. She could not even manage to discuss the issue with her father.

She decided to risk everything and say “No, I can’t agree marrying someone I consider a brother!” The family was upset… Berdel (the bride exchange tradition) had collapsed… This was not the first time such thing had happened in that part of Turkey and what ought to be done was clear in the minds of everyone, including Lalihan… She either would commit suicide and clean the honor of the family (in that case a junior sister would become the bride under the terms of “berdel” or Lalihan would be punished (killed) by either her brother, or the bridegroom-to-be whom she rejected, and thus the family would restore its dignity in the local population.

She did not have a younger sister that the family could offer as “sacrifice” and the bridegroom-to-be climbed the stairs to the roof of Lalihan’s house, took out his sharp knife, stabbed the body of the young girl who had refused to become his bride until she fell dead while an army of relatives watched the horrible scene from a distance! The honor of the family was restored!

Barbarism in demonstration:

The body of Lalihan could have been silently buried and the case would have been closed, her would-be bridegroom executioner and those who ordered her “execution” could have get away with the crime because there was no evidence, after all, that she ever lived anyhow… She was not registered, never had an ID… She was just one of those girls of eastern Anatolia who did not live at all, according to official Turkey.

Somehow, the murder was reported, however, and Lalihan managed to be registered in official Turkey after her murder, as an honor crime victim.

Was official Turkey required to register and protect Lalihan while she was alive, or simply to register her as a victim of honor crime? Lalihan is gone, like many others who were “sacrificed” by a primitive mentality… It is too late to save Lalihan, but there are many others in Anatolia who like Lalihan are not “alive” in official records but await this state’s attention to prevent a similar calamity! After all, what is a state for if it cannot protect Lalihans?