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Honour Killing On Trial

International News, By Joal, 10th September, 2009

A father in Turkey is on trial this week for the ‘honour killing’ of his gay son, but the man remains in hiding as the trial goes on without him.

Ahmet Yildiz was murdered in June last year in a drive-by shooting. It was widely believed at the time that the murder was an ‘honour killing’ conducted by Yildiz’s family to overcome the ‘shame’ of his homosexuality and relationship with another man.

The trial’s prosecutors say Ahmet’s father, 49-year-old Yahya Yildiz, was at the scene of the murder. Signals from Yahya’s mobile phone place him at the scene, and witness reports indicate a car rented by the father was also present.

26-year-old Ahmet had come out to his family, but his German-Turkish partner, Ibrahim Can, said they were never happy about it.

“Ahmet had been receiving threats for as long as I knew him,” Can told the UK’s PinkNews last year. “He told me this has been going on since his coming out a year ago. When he came out to his parents, who had always suspected, they made him feel guilty about it.”

While the former partner of the murdered man doubts justice will be delivered in the trail, because homophobia in Turkey is “unbelievably bad,” the murder trial began this week. Despite the absence of Yahya, who has reportedly gone into hiding and cannot be found by authorities, Ahmed’s father will be trialled in absentia.

A female by-stander, also wounded in the shooting, is a joint plaintiff with the murdered Ahmet. Human rights groups are monitoring the case after complaints emerged about the failure of Turkish courts to successfully prosecute homophobic hate crimes in the past.