Turkish police detain right-wing politician in the killing of ethnic
Armenian journalist
The Associated Press
Published: March 25, 2007
ISTANBUL, Turkey: Turkish police late Sunday detained a right-wing
politician for interrogation in connection with the killing of an
ethnic Armenian journalist, a news channel reported.
The police detained Yasar Cihan, head of the local branch of the
conservative and nationalist Great Unity Party in the Black Sea port
city of Trabzon, private NTV television reported.
The detention came several hours after Patriarch Mesrob II, the
spiritual head of the Armenian Orthodox community in Turkey, on Sunday
criticized authorities for failing to find those who ordered the
killing of the journalist Hrant Dink.
Dink was killed outside his paper, Agos, in Istanbul on Jan. 19.
Prosecutors have pressed charges against 10 suspects, including some
former members of the youth wing of Great Unity.
According to NTV, police were still looking for another leading member
of Great Unity, Halis Egemen.
Dink’s killing prompted international condemnation as well as debate
within Turkey about free speech, and whether state institutions were
tolerant of militant nationalists.
Dink, the 52-year-old editor of the bilingual Agos newspaper, had been
brought to trial numerous times for allegedly "insulting Turkishness,"
a crime under Turkey’s penal code.