Honour killing girl 'wanted love'

Tulay Goren's body has never been found

A teenager allegedly murdered by her father in a so-called "honour killing" hated her family and wanted to run away, a court has heard.

Tulay Goren, 15, a Kurdish Turk from Woodford Green, north London, vanished in 1999 and her body has never been found, the Old Bailey has been told.

Her boyfriend at the time, Halil Unal, 41, told the jury she said she wanted "a man who will love me and marry me".

Her father Mehmet Goren, 49, denies murdering her.

Tulay's uncles Cuma Goren, 42, and Ali Goren, 55, both from Walthamstow, east London, also deny her murder.

State benefits

Mr Unal gave evidence from behind a screen about a conversation he had with Tulay at a clothing factory.

He was working at the factory as a supervisor, when Tulay began a summer job there in 1998.

He told the court that Tulay said she was constantly under pressure from her father.

She told him that she and her father used to go together to the post office to collect state benefits and then her father would use the money to gamble with.

I am looking for a man who will love me and marry me Tulay Goren

Mr Unal told the court: "She said, 'I hate my family and I want to run away from that house.

"'I am looking for a man who will love me and marry me'."

He recalled the time he met Tulay at Stratford bus station, in east London after she had been beaten.

"I saw that she had bruising to her eye.

"She told me that her father tortured her and beat her and that her uncle Cuma was pressuring her."

"I said 'all this will pass, don't worry'."

'Mutual love'

Mr Unal, who came to the UK in 1992, said Tulay had told him she was 17.

"Tulay said 'age isn't important, what is important is mutual love'."

Mr Unal spoke with Tulay every day on the phone after her summer job ended.

"She was saying that she loved me very much. She said 'I want to be with you'."

He said he wanted "start a family" with Tulay and asked her mother, who worked at the factory, for her daughter's hand in marriage but was told that Tulay was promised to an uncle's son in Switzerland.

Mr Unal said: "I have been waiting for 10 years for this case to be brought about and I am very happy and at peace at the fact that I am here today."

'Restore honour'

He said in December 1998 Mehmet Goren went to the factory, attacked him and asked him to stop "bothering" his daughter.

Tulay was last seen alive on 7 January 1999 with her father, of Navestock Crescent, Woodford Green, who is alleged to have killed her later that day.

Jonathan Laidlaw QC, prosecuting, said Tulay was killed "to restore the so-called honour" of the family, who originate from Turkey.

The court heard Mr Unal was brought up as a Sunni Muslim while the Gorens were from the Alevi branch of the faith.

While they came from places no more than 60 miles apart in Turkey, a relationship between the sects "would not have been tolerated".

The trial continues.