Turkey Acquits 2 Men in Berlin ‘Honor Killing’ of Their Sister -
By PATRICK KINGSLEYMAY 30, 2017
ISTANBUL — Two Kurdish German men accused of helping to kill their sister in 2005 because of her Western lifestyle were acquitted Tuesday in a Turkish court, in the latest failed attempt to prosecute them in a case
that became a benchmark for cultural tensions between Turkey and Germany.
But his brothers — Mutlu, now 38, and Alparslan, now 36 — have been acquitted twice of helping him: first in Germany in 2006,
and again on Tuesday when they were found not guilty at a separate trial in Istanbul because of a lack of evidence.
But a crucial prosecution witness who might have been able to offer evidence
that the brothers had cooperated in the killing — Ayhan Surucu’s ex-girlfriend — did not appear to testify in the Istanbul trial, according to Leyla Suren, a lawyer with the Initiative Against Femicide, a Turkish rights-advocacy group, who attended the hearing.
A child of Turkish-Kurdish immigrants, Ms. Surucu was brought up in Germany before her father pulled her out of school
and sent her back to her family’s ancestral village in Turkey, where at 16 she was forced to marry a cousin, according to German news reports.
Some seized on the case to further their arguments
that conservative Muslims are incompatible with secular German society, and it reflected more broadly on relations between Turkey and Germany at a time when some Europeans were arguing against allowing Turkey to join the European Union because of civil rights issues.
After requests from Germany, Mutlu and Alparslan Surucu were eventually arrested by the Turkish authorities
and brought to Istanbul in early 2016 — a case that culminated in their second acquittal on Tuesday.