ANKARA: Who could answer these questions?

New Anatolian, Turkey
Jan 26 2007

Who could answer these questions?
Onder Aytac & Emre Uslu

[email protected] January 2007

Concerning the responsibility for Hrant Dink’s murder, the most
crucial questions that people in the West are unclear on have been
raised by one of our readers from Germany. We would like to share his
questions with you and welcome any good answer that could satisfy
him.

Here’s what our reader had to say:

"If you plant a bomb in a public place, this is probably attempted
murder, or at least manslaughter, in several cases. In my opinion,
you can’t get away with just 11 months in prison for this. In other
words, I could say that Yasin Hayal not only got judicial expertise
from someone beforehand, but, perhaps, also support from the judges.

"Is this, then, indeed Turkish law? Or just a ‘mentality’ of Turkish
judges to disregard human life? (That would require that it’s trained
and taught at central points, probably in universities)

"Or was it an organized crime which involved judges or people in a
position to manipulate or pressure judges?

"In the latter case, the senseless McDonald’s bombing [in 2004 that
Hayal was sentenced for] may have been a test of loyalty and/or
unscrupulousness. As he was ‘proven,’ Hayal was recycled as fast as
possible to serve ‘higher’ purposes.

"Of course, that’s just another conspiracy theory.

"And how is it that the High Court of Appeals still couldn’t find
enough sense of honor to resign? Don’t they have an idea how much
contempt for Turkey’s judiciary they produced? It seems to me that
there we have a strong argument for the mentality theory."

After all these questions, what we would say is that you can find
many people who would come up with many petty little comments, but
who could believe them?