ISTANBUL, July 8 (IslamOnline.net) - The Turkish Parliament’s legal committee has approved strict prison sentences to deter the growing number of honor killings, a move met with satisfaction by politicians and human rights activists in the country.

The committee gave the nod to an article banning the father, husband, brother or son from pleading provocation or diminished responsibility to get reduced sentences.

Its decision, which requires amendments to the penal code, came as part of other steps the Ankara government had promised the European Union to take three years ago.

The amendments are meant to accord with the European Convention on Human Rights, which include some instruments enshrining common values as to fundamental freedoms and democratic principles.

They also come to meet demands of civil advocacy groups for strict prison terms in honor-related crimes, prevalent in Turkish rural areas mostly populated by Arabs and Kurds.

Women in these ethnic minority groups are murdered by relatives or hired assassins because they are judged to have shamed their families by perceived immoral behavior such as working in official or secret brothels.

The Turkish law allows setting up brothels for the frequency of those who are more than 18-year-old under the supervision of the health and police officials.

A Turkish women advocacy group had put forward a request to the Parliament for more stringent actions against the honor-related crimes.

Emine Erdogan, the wife of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had earlier slammed these crimes as "heinous actions".

Press reports have splashed out incidents of honor killings in the country, with many more incidents went unreported due to fear or cultural taboos.

On July 6, the family of one dead woman refused to take her body for a funeral procession and burial because of her immoral behavior and working in a night club.

TV networks also aired a women demonstration in the outside of Bakirkoy hospital in Istanbul February to protest against the killing of one woman by her brothers for committing adultery.

On May 10, a father had slain his daughter after he hysterically accused her and his wife of having affairs with different men.

TV footage showed the man declining to respond to the appeals of the crying daughter while breathing her last, but rather attempted to kill his second daughter who threw herself from the balcony of the house in Iskenderun in southern Turkey.

Ten days after the incident, F. Shahin, of the ruling Justice and Development Party, made a request for forming a fact-finding committee to investigate such kinds of crimes.

Sheikh D. Demircan, a Muslim scholar, has said in TV interviews that the honor killings have nothing to do with Islam.

But he also took the blame to education, which Demircan accused of providing no enough information on the dangers of having illegitimate affairs.

Demircan also said that media outlets are another reason that could increase the rampant honor crimes, but he warned parents against forcing their daughters into marriage as one way leading to extramarital affair.

A study by Amnesty International (AI) in several provinces in east and southeast Turkey found that 45.7 percent of women were not consulted about their choice of marriage partner and 50.8 percent were married without their consent.

Women forced into marriages are often under age. Those of them who refuse their family’s choice of husband risk violence and even death, it said.

AI said that Turkish men have used forced marriage to evade punishment for sexual assault, rape and abduction.

Forced marriage may also involve physical violence, abuse, abduction, detention, and murder of the individual concerned", it added.

There are also cases in which families, either deliberately or through neglect, fail to ensure that the sale of their daughter to a potential husband does not end up with their daughter being internally trafficked for forced prostitution.

Analysts had said that strict prison terms could not prevent honor killings, as the practice is deeply entrenched in the Turkish countryside.

They set honor at the top of their priorities, Mustafa Qara, a Kurdish intellectual and legal expert, told IslamOnline.net.

He said that a boy and a girl were killed in their village after having an affair, although the murder was against the Shari’ah or Islamic law.

AI had revealed a culture of violence that can place women in double jeopardy, both as victims of violence and because they are denied effective access to justice.

Its recommendations to the Turkish government are focused on the reforms needed to protect all women from violence and their implementation.

Mohammad Sarwar Ahmad, Liverpool, said anyone who overlooked this action "should also be put behind bars."

"There is no such thing as honor killing in Islam let alone killing your own daughter. This person should be put behind bars for rest of his life," he added.