The hole where Medine Memi was buried by her relatives in the courtyard of their house in Adiyaman, southeastern Turkey Photo: REUTERS
Medine Memi was found in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a two-metre hole dug under a chicken pen outside her home in Kahta, in the south-eastern province of Adiyaman.
Her father and grandfather have since been arrested and are due to face trial over her death. Her mother was also charged but has since been released.
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Hundreds of Egyptian teenagers arrested for 'flirting'Police made the discovery in December after a tip-off from an informant, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported on its website.
Medine had first been reported missing 40 days earlier.
The informant told the police she had been killed following a family "council" meeting.
Media reports said the father had told relatives he was unhappy that his daughter – one of nine children – had male friends. The grandfather is said to have beaten her for having relations with the opposite sex.
A postmortem examination revealed large amounts of soil in her lungs and stomach, indicating that she had been alive and conscious while being buried.
"The report is blood curdling. According to our findings the girl who had no bruises on her body and no sign of narcotics or poison in her blood was alive and fully conscious when she was buried," one official involved in the case told the Times.
It also emerged that Medine had repeatedly tried to report to police that she had been beaten by her father and grandfather days before she was killed. "She tried to take refuge at the police station three times, and she was sent home three times," her mother, Immihan, said after the body was discovered in December.
Medine's father is reported as saying at the time: "She has male friends. We are uneasy about that."
Although honour killings are not infrequent in Turkey, the especially gruesome manner of Medine's death has shocked the nation.
Official figures have indicated that more than 200 such killings take place each year, accounting for around half of all murders in Turkey.
