GERMANY: The so-called honour killing of a young Turkish woman in Berlin is fuelling debate in Germany about Islam and multiculturalism versus integration. Derek Scally reports.
Beside the bus stop, surrounded by candles, flowers and snow, are two photographs of two women.
One has a wan face, wears a headscarf and holds a small boy; the other has long, dark hair, large earrings and a crooked smile. Only the haunted eyes reveal that the two photographs are of the same woman: Hatun Sürücü.
The 23-year-old was waiting at a Berlin bus stop three weeks ago at 9pm when a gunman shot her three times in the chest. She collapsed and bled to death in the street. Days later Berlin police arrested three of her brothers, aged 18, 24 and 25. They remain in police custody, suspected of murdering their sister in a so-called "honour killing".
Hatun grew up with her five brothers and three sisters in Berlin but when she turned 15, her parents sent her back to Istanbul to marry her cousin Ismail. Two years later she returned to Berlin, pregnant, and gave birth to a son. She divorced her husband, finished her secondary school education and was about to pass her final exams as an electrical technician. She stopped wearing a head scarf, began wearing T-shirts and jeans and started dating.
That ended last month with what police described as an "execution-style killing".
With 2.5 million Turks and Germans of Turkish origin, integration issues are never far from the headlines here. But a brother killing his own sister to regain the family honour is a concept impossible for most Germans to understand. Police say there have been at least five such "honour" killings in Berlin since October, but they generally remain shadowy, faceless crimes.
The face of Hatun Sürücü could change that. What started as a news brief about an anonymous shooting has snowballed, increasing pressure on politicians to act.
But public figures here are paralysed by a very German kind of political correctness, tainted by Nazi-era intolerance of everything considered foreign. Most politicians prefer to let integration issues lie - anyone who admits there is a problem with immigrants runs the risk of being branded a racist. While right-wing politicians demand that immigrants prostrate themselves before a "leading German culture", left-wing politicians call for "tolerance of difference".
"But whoever argues like that considers Turkish women a different kind of person in a different culture, with rules that have to be accepted even when they are misogynist," says Alice Schwarzer, one of Germany's leading feminists.
Government ministers say it is difficult for the state to intervene in what happens behind closed doors. Germany's chancellor Gerhard Schröder has called on Turkish immigrants "not to stand to one side" and tolerate unacceptable behaviour in their community. "The Islamic organisations in particular have to have a public debate about the role of women," said Dilek Kolat, a Turkish member of the Social Democrats (SPD) in the Berlin state parliament.
Immigrant groups condemn such killings, but qualify their condemnation by saying that honour killings are the exception rather than the rule, and that such archaic ideas are the preserve of elderly, first-generation Turkish immigrants.
But there is anecdotal evidence that acceptance of such killings is more widespread than immigrant groups are prepared to admit.
The principal of a secondary school near where Hatun was shot was shocked when, in a group discussion about the killing, young male Turkish students said: "It's her own fault. The whore walked around like a German." Such views come as no surprise to Necla Kelek, a Turkish-born sociologist who interviewed 50 women forced into marriage for her book The Alien Bride - a report from inside Turkish life in Germany.
Her book attacks concepts of "family honour" and the trade in teenage brides between immigrants in Germany and their relatives in Turkey. She argues that this practice, ostensibly to keep tradition alive, is more about making women beholden to their husbands in a foreign country.
The book has been a huge success. She disputes the argument of leading German politicians, that the Turkish community needs to take the lead in stopping forced marriages and "honour" killings.
"Do Germans really want to integrate Muslims? Or continue to tolerate a parallel society because they don't want to get involved, because they think this kind of thinking cannot be integrated anyway?" said Ms Kelek at the weekend.
"If you do want to integrate immigrants then particular things have to be demanded. For example, that they learn German." Her argument is controversial: that Germans should no longer be afraid to put their own cultural norms first rather than passively allowing all practices immigrant groups describe as "cultural".
Ms Kelek says: "When a culture represses and mistreats its own children then we aren't talking about culture but circumstances, circumstances we must stop."