Rise in Turkish girls' suicides worries activists
http://fullcoverage.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060526/wl_nm/turkey_suicide_dc_1
BATMAN,
Turkey (Reuters) - Bahar Sogut was 14 when she shot herself in the head with
her father's gun.
"She
died with Allah's (God's) bidding," her mother, Nefise Sogut, told
Reuters. Fate was the only explanation either gave for what happened.
Bahar Sogut was one of 14 people -- 10 of them women and girls aged under
23 -- who have killed themselves this year in Batman, a city of 250,000 people,
activists say. Another was aged 12 and threw herself off a building opposite
her school.
Rising suicides among women in the mainly Kurdish southeast has prompted
the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Yakin Erturk, to visit
the region, where rights activists say families are forcing young women into
suicide because the government has clamped down on so-called "honor
killings."
Hanging, poisoning and shooting are the most common methods, they say.
Turkey, which started