THE body of a 16-year-old Muslim girl has been unearthed in Adiyaman, south-eastern Turkey, where she was buried alive by relatives.
According to this report, Medine Memi was found in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a two-metre hole dug under a chicken pen outside her home in Kahta.
The hole from which the girl's body was dug
Her father and grandfather have since been arrested and are due to face trial over her death. Her mother was also charged but has since been released.
Police made the discovery in December after a tip-off from an informant.
Medine had first been reported missing 40 days earlier.
The informant told the police she had been killed following a family “council” meeting.
Media reports said the father had told relatives he was unhappy that his daughter – one of nine children – had male friends. The grandfather is said to have beaten her for fraternising with the opposite sex.
A postmortem examination revealed large amounts of soil in her lungs and stomach, indicating that she had been alive and conscious while being buried.
An official involved in the case said:
The report is blood curdling. According to our findings the girl, who had no bruises on her body and no sign of narcotics or poison in her blood, was alive and fully conscious when she was buried.
It also emerged that Medine had repeatedly tried to report to police that she had been beaten by her father and grandfather days before she was killed.
Her mother, Immihan, said after the body was discovered in December:
She tried to take refuge at the police station three times, and she was sent home three times.
Medine’s father is reported as saying at the time:
She has male friends. We are uneasy about that.
Although honour killings are not infrequent in Turkey, the especially gruesome manner of Medine’s death has shocked the nation.
Official figures have indicated that more than 200 such killings take place each year, accounting for around half of all murders in Turkey.
Hat Tip: PaulEd and Alan H
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
February 5th, 2010 at 10:00 pm
Stories of this kind turn up with monotonous regularity here on the Freethinker blog. If the mainstream media started to report them, our battle for secularism would surely receive a boost.
I glean some hope from the fact that intelligent youngsters are reacting well to government policy for teaching religion in schools, according to a recent letter to the NSS. Although there is obviously partisan indoctrination going on, schools are required by law to teach the basics of all the main religions as part of the national curriculum. As a result, most kids, on being told that this religion is true and this is the rubbish that the other lot believe, are concluding that actually it is all rubbish.
February 5th, 2010 at 10:12 pm
Not even the police protected this girl because of their sickness.
My family come before any law, religion or nation. I do not understand the mentality of the sub-humans that would do this to one of their own. Why not just insist she’s home by a certain time?
The Turks want to join the EU, maybe in ten years, I hope maybe never. Kemal Ataturk must be spinning in his grave as his secular Turkey reverts to medievalism.
We have more than enough koranimals as it is without “accommodating” another 70 million orcs.
February 5th, 2010 at 10:51 pm
This is just obscene… it happens more and more and needs to be reported on, the vile thinking that supports, promotes and endorses this kind of filth needs stamping out.
While things like this are happening Turkey should not be allowed to join the EU…. and as for the so called “honour” killings that happen in the UK…- I hate that name there’s no honour involved at all – well I say anyone who does it should be imprisoned for the rest of their natural lives.
Women are equal, all the Abramhamic religions seem to have a problem with that, very strange when so many women get brainwashed into this filth as children and accept it…. I for one will never be able to get my head round it.
February 5th, 2010 at 11:12 pm
Terrible though this murder, and others like it, are, it’s as well to get figures right.
The claim that there are about 200 such killings each year make up about 50% of Turkish murders has zero credibility.
http://www.secularcafe.org/showthread.php?t=5276
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.....icide_rate
Either the number of Turkish murders, or the number of Turkish honour killings, has been massively underestimated.
David B
February 6th, 2010 at 12:08 am
“If the mainstream media started to report them, our battle for secularism would surely receive a boost.”
That is precisely why the godphuqt media moguls will NOT report them.
February 6th, 2010 at 12:38 am
That poor young woman. There was no love in the hearts of her father and grandfather and no conscience either. Police came to her rescue after her death,what a sham. Her poor mother I am sure is also in a bad way. Is religion really the problem? Or man-kinds perception of religion. Religion can be used for either good or evil.People have free will to use it any way they want.
February 6th, 2010 at 1:02 am
Make you sad and want to hurt them, no?
I hope the EU manages to put some pressure on Turkey to stop this before ascension.
February 6th, 2010 at 8:24 am
I have to say, in defence of the press, that this story has been on online sites for two days now!
February 6th, 2010 at 9:01 am
Thanks for that barriejohn, I stand corrected.
Doris Tracey, yes religion is to blame, it poisons natural human sexuality and distorts really obvious moral questions. Obvious questions of right and wrong that no one but the devout could possibly come up with the incorrect answer to.
February 6th, 2010 at 9:42 am
Where there is religion, women will suffer.
You may be interested to see this BBC report: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wor.....499578.stm
February 6th, 2010 at 10:36 am
Angela_K
I saw that BBC report you linked us to.
I watched it most of the way through but found its content too depressing after a while. After some thought depression got replaced by anger. We will not get koranimals like that to cease their activities through dialogue, argument and persuasion. They should met with force and removed from the planet. They cannot be reasoned or dealt with and will renege on any deals made. The Taliban do it and justify it in the name of their cause.
http://www.thereligionofpeace......aqiyya.htm
Kill them all before we are overrun by orcs.
February 6th, 2010 at 11:40 am
She is not Turkish.She is Kurdish.In Turkey kurds are generally live in south eastern.these kinds of murders are done by kurds not Turks.And Our religion wants a Muslim not to kill a innocent human.This is not related with our religion.You are the rude ones. We dont need you.We dont need EU.We are enough for us.And Our Prophet(S.A.S)forbade these kinds of murders.
February 6th, 2010 at 3:10 pm
I think it is perhaps more the result of a cultural misguidance than religious. It makes me very angry and sad nonetheless.
February 6th, 2010 at 5:37 pm
I read the story on the International Coalition Against Honour Killings website, where I also saw something any of us wanting to stop such shit might want to know.
IKWRO, an organisation based in London which works to help women and girls who speak Kurdish, Farsi, Dari, Turkish and Arabic in the UK, runs the ICAHK website, deals with thousands of calls every year and offers advocacy and advice in cases of domestic violence, forced marriage and ‘honour’-based violence (HBV).
Sadly, while receiving praise from the police and the Forced Marriage Unit (FMU), it heard in late December it is doubly a victim of funding cuts. Firstly, a grant for a Kurdish outreach worker was not renewed by the FMU, and secondly, the UK government, in breach of its own agreement, rescinded a grant for campaign workers after it had been granted.
The ‘Honour Network Helpline’ (a project by Karma Nirvana, which operates with IKWRO’s collaboration) may also have to restrict services and may even close due to lack of support .
http://www.stophonourkillings.com/?q=node/4081 is the link if you want to know more.
You can also link to petitions protesting what sounds awfully like decent folk being put out of business due to private talks between government and faith-bigoted QUANGOs who’d like the cash themselves for more evangelising.
February 6th, 2010 at 11:01 pm
Can’t we start calling this ‘faith killing’, because there’s no honour to be found among such people. Honour – by any reasonable definition – is not about covertly murdering your daughters by burying them alive.
As for the tired old claim that this is ‘not really about religion, just culture’, isn’t that a classic example of having your cake and eating it?
Islam seems to be ‘the woman-killer that’s never there’, a kind of gynocidal Macavity. It’s never to blame for cases like this – dear me, no. But, mysteriously enough, Islam becomes central to people’s cultural identity when it’s politically and financially convenient.
February 27th, 2010 at 5:50 pm
@Valdemar You talk about islam being the women killer, i advise you to seek some knowledge since you speak without it.
If you did know about islam you wouldn’t be saying what you are at the moment because their are 1.5Billion muslims around the world and it is also the fastest growing religion, so you expect 1.5Billion people to be bogus [i think not].
Next time do your research before you shame yourself on a pubic website