A Wife Bound by Shame

When Öztürk began a four-year nursing program in 1989, her father called her constantly, often coming by the nurses' station at the local hospital to check in on her. When he felt she was getting too independent, he looked around for a suitable husband.

She was working a shift at the hospital one night when a young man, the son of someone who had grown up in the same village as her father, came to ask for her hand in marriage. Shocked, she politely declined.

She soon found out it wasn't her decision to make. Before she knew it, wedding invitations were being sent out. Her pleas fell on deaf ears. "They didn't understand why I didn't want to marry him," she says.

Refusal would have meant shame

Many parents don't know the pain they put their children through, says Rahel Volz, who heads Terre des Femmes, which is based in Tübingen, Germany. "They were married the same way, and never asked why," she says.

Victims don't say no early enough, so the parents just assume they accept, she adds.

Öztürk knew refusal would have meant shame for her family, so she went along, saying goodbye to the brief taste of life outside her traditional upbringing.

Her husband terrorized her, even physically abusing her on occasion, she says, adding that his mother and sister barred contact between Öztürk and her family.

"I didn't feel anything or want anything," she says, recalling that period of her life. "I would walk the streets without a destination."

Uncle intervenes to save her

She sneaked away to visit a psychologist, but couldn't muster the courage to do what the doctor told her: leave. When she told her parents she wanted out, they turned her away at their doorstep - twice.

As a last resort, she appealed to her uncle, the more liberal-minded brother in her father's family. After an intense family discussion, her father relented and allowed her to divorce.

Öztürk shakes her head and falls silent when telling this part of the story. Though she continues to stay in contact with her parents, she told them she could never forgive them. "It's a closed chapter in my life," says Öztürk, who is now married - to a man of her choosing - and has a three-month-old baby. "But there are still wounds."