The woman’s actions are considered a provocation, and murder sentences are shortened. The families make their children into killers because sentences are shorter still for minors. Mehmet Tamer went to prison for just two years and nine months.”I was so scared when I heard about Sevda Gok,” says Ayse Gul, a young woman living in Sanliurfa, the main city of the province where most of the killings take place. It was in a central Sanliurfa square that Sevda Gok was murdered “I went home and asked my brother if he would ever kill me. But he was against the killings: that made me calmer.”Ms Gul’s head is wrapped tightly in the Islamic headscarf you see everywhere on the streets of Sanliurfa.To the casual visitor, Sanliurfa, once called Edessa, is one of the most romantic cities in Turkey, with its maze of dusty lanes, its ruined castle, and its medieval bazaar where blacksmiths still work by hand.

The city is an Islamic pilgrimage site: Turkish Muslims believe that this was the birthplace of the prophet Abraham.But behind the exotic atmosphere lies one of the most conservative societies in Turkey. In the poor, uneducated communities where the killings take place, unmarried women are hardly ever allowed out of their houses.Ms Gul and her friends are sitting in the classroom of a state-run school for uneducated women Here they are under the state’s protection. Even so, they will not give their real names.”If a girl is dishonoured, it’s considered the fault of the whole family,” explains Ms Gul “Her brothers can’t marry. People say if they can’t protect their own sister they won’t be able to protect a wife.”She tells of one case where a woman married her boyfriend in secret. The woman’s father initially forgave the couple and for this, the extended family disowned him.

Eventually, under relentless pressure, the man killed his daughter. When a woman is considered to have disgraced her family in this way, her male relatives are ostracised from local society. They are no longer welcome in the crowded all-male tea-houses that are the centres of social life.The decision to kill the woman is taken by a macabre council of death The men of the family meet in the woman’s own house Often, she is in the next room as they sentence her The family appoints a young male relative to kill her. In the case of Hacer Felhan, her brother went straight into the next room and shot her dead with a hunting rifle.The mothers often try to save their daughters, and in one documented case a mother was able to prevent a killing. But in another case a mother who refused to tell the men where her daughter was hiding was herself murdered.Ms Gul says it is not only the men who are responsible for the killings. “Most of the time it’s the older women of the neighbourhood who force the men to do the killing,” she says.

“If something happens to the neighbour’s daughter the older women talk. Eventually the men are made to act.”Society unites around the killers. Sevda Gok was murdered in a crowded square full of witnesses Twenty people were called to give evidence. Only one man admitted he had seen the incident.Most of Ms Gul’s friends are against the killings But some believe they are justified “There are some rules,” says Merve Taner. “If a woman breaks the rules they’re right to kill her.”Ms Taner has had her own experience of the restrictive rules “I had a boyfriend,” she says. “But after 10 days I decided I had to tell my family everything When I told my mother my whole body was trembling. She refused to accept my boyfriend because he wasn’t from Sanliurfa.