[T]here was a decades-long dispute between the attackers' family and the family of the would-be groom. … [T]he masked attackers had wanted the bride-to-be to marry one among their own group of friends or relatives, but that her family would not allow it. …

"Honor is very important in this region, and it's very difficult to change the traditions that deal with honor. They are a very strong part of this society," says Mazhar Bagli, a professor of sociology at Dicle University in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir.

Experts believe dozens are killed each year in "blood feuds" in rural Turkey. Efforts to stop the feuds' violence have been limited, mostly left to individuals such as Sait Sanli, a former butcher in Diyarbakir who helps broker peace treaties between warring families.

Consider, too, that whether they live in Europe or in Turkey, a sizable number of Turks continue to support and practice so-called honor killings. In March "Unreported World," a British television news magazine that “offers an insight into the lives of people … largely overlooked by the global news machine” went to Turkey to investigate honor killings and the unintended consequence of a new law that outlaws the practice “passed as part of the Government's attempts to join the EU”:  

The team travels to the city of Batman, nicknamed "suicide city" because in the last few years hundreds of women and girls have committed suicide. Like other areas of the country, female suicides rocketed after the change in the law. Batman's chief prosecutor tells Unreported World that he believes many of the suicides in the town are forced, but that they're almost impossible to investigate. Those women who escape the attempt flee into hiding.

One young woman, Elif, claims that when she was 18 years old, her parents wanted to force her into marriage. When she refused, she claims her family told her that if she didn't marry him, she would have to kill herself. She says her father told her if he, or her brother, was forced to kill her they would go to prison so she should think of them and kill herself. She said she considered doing it because she loved her father so much, but she realized she didn't want to die. Instead she ran away.

Ending up in Istanbul, the team finds that even the most modernised city in Turkey hasn't escaped the tradition. According to a government report, it now has one of the highest levels of honour killings in the country, with one happening every week. The Government has condemned honour killings and launched a commission with the aim of reducing them. Yet, in the three weeks the Unreported World team is in the country, they see twelve cases reported in the press as the murders continue unabated.

Finally, in a recent commentary in Slate, Christopher Hitchens argues that Turkey’s bad behavior at the NATO summit in Strasbourg in April should serve as a warning to the European Union. Recall that Ankara objected to Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen becoming the new NATO secretary-general because of those cartoons Danish newspapers had published, which the Muslim world - including Turkey - considers blasphemous, and because Denmark refuses to shutter a TV station broadcasting programming in Kurdish to Kurds in Turkey.

Hitchens quotes from a Times of London interview with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner ("I was very shocked by the pressure that was brought upon us. Turkey's evolution in, let's say, a more religious direction, towards a less robust secularism, worries me.") and adds:

It's not just a matter of a Turkish political party undermining Turkey's own historic secularism. It is a question of Turkey trying to impose its Islamist and chauvinist policies on another European state - and indeed on the whole NATO alliance. And if this is how it behaves before it has been admitted to the European Union, has it not invited us all to guess how it would behave when it had a veto power in those councils? …

Its troops already occupy one-third of the territory of an EU member (Cyprus), and now it exploits its NATO membership to try to bully one of the smaller nations with which it is supposed to be conjoined in a common defense. …

The Strasbourg crisis clarifies the entire picture and should make us grateful to have been warned in such a timely fashion. Turkey wants all the privileges of NATO and EU membership but also wishes to continue occupying Cyprus, denying Kurdish rights, and lying about the Armenian genocide. On top of this, it now desires to act as a proxy for Islamization and dares to waste the time of a defensive alliance in trying to censor the press of another member state!

Turks will always be Turks – and Ataturk’s blue eyes will never make them  European. Since barbarism and bullying are deeply ingrained characteristics of Turkishness, the civilized world would do well to shun them.

State-Sponsored Anti-Semitism On The March In Venezuela

The Wall Street Journal's Melanie Kirkpatrick interviewed Rabbi Pynchas Bremer, Venezuela’s chief rabbi in Washington D.C., who told her that an upsurge of anti-Semitism is driving Jews from the country:

In 1998, the year Hugo Chavez was elected president, there were 22,000 Jews in Venezuela. Today the Jewish population is estimated at between 10,000 and 15,000. …

Mr. Chavez's vitriol about Jews is well documented and of long standing. In recent years he has referred to Venezuelan Jews as "descendants of the same ones who crucified Christ" and "a minority [that] has taken ownership of all the gold of the planet." According to Shmuel Herzfeld, a Washington, D.C., rabbi who visited Venezuela in March: "Chavez is isolating the Jews and turning Venezuelans against the Jewish community.” …

[T]he U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom puts Venezuela on a watch list of countries where religious freedom is threatened. "Anti-Semitic statements by government officials and state media," it says, "have created a hostile environment whereby some Venezuelan citizens have harassed and threatened rabbis, vandalized Jewish businesses with anti-Semitic slogans, and called for a boycott of all Jewish businesses in Venezuela." …

Venezuelan Catholics are also "at risk," the Commission on International Religious Freedom notes, and there have been "repeated attacks" on Catholic leaders and Catholic institutions. …

Rabbi Bremer, the chief rabbi of Venezuela, asks that the world pay attention to the plight of Jews in his country. "We don't know what the future holds for us," he says. …

Rabbi Herzfeld is blunter: "I think we're in the early stages of something catastrophic."

[Hat Tip: The Heel, an Ivy-educated attorney with a prestigious New York firm, and occasional contributor to this blog.]

The Stiletto Scoops The New York Times

Before Obama, three other constitutional-law professors have gone on to be elected president: William Howard Taft, who was a professor and dean at the University of Cincinnati Law School and, after leaving the presidency, taught at Yale Law School and then served as Chief Justice of the United States; Woodrow Wilson, who was a professor of jurisprudence and president of Princeton as well as the first lecturer in constitutional law at New York Law School; and Bill Clinton, who taught constitutional law at the University of Arkansas.
-  "Obama Is Just About Every U.S. President All Rolled Into One!," The Stiletto Blog, February 16, 2009, quoting from Washingtonian.com’s “Obama: The Teacher President” 

Many American presidents have been lawyers, but almost none have come to office with Barack Obama's knowledge of the Supreme Court.

- “As A Professor, Obama Held Pragmatic Views On Court,” The New York Times, May 3, 2009

Editorial Note: Washingtonian.com and The New York Times use the exact same photo of Obama at the blackboard (The Times obviously didn’t know about that, either), which is the only writing Obama “the legal scholar” did on the topic of constitutional law, never having written a book on the subject (unlike President Wilson). Obama did, however, edit the law review articles of “eminent legal scholars,” though he was unable to produce any original legal scholarship of his own – which Times reporter Jodi Kantor also failed to mention.

In Memoriam

Dom DeLuise, August 1, 1933 – May 4, 2009