Turkish Daily News, Turkey
Jan 19 2008
Pro-Armenian scholar blames ‘deep state’ for Dink’s murder
Saturday, January 19, 2008
ÜMÝT ENGÝNSOY
WASHINGTON – Turkish Daily News
Turkey’s atmosphere of intolerance is to blame for the murder of
Hrant Dink a Turkish academic in the United States, who also spoke in
Washington about Turkish-Armenian relations, said Thursday.
Turkey’s `deep state’ is guilty of masterminding last year’s
killing of Dink, a prominent Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor, said
Taner Akçam, a Turkish academic backing Armenian `genocide’ claims.
This `deep state’ is an underground coalition of part of the
security forces and unelected bureaucrats determined to impede
Turkey’s democratization, Akçam, who is a former left-wing militant
and now a visiting associate professor of history at the University
of Minnesota, said at a news conference here.
Dink, editor of the Armenian-Turkish Agos newspaper, was shot to
death in front of his Istanbul office on Jan. 19, 2007. A nationalist
youth was apprehended for the murder and has confessed to the crime.
His trial is ongoing.
Dink’s murder was much more complicated than an isolated crime and
was a result of a `dangerous mindset’ in Turkey, Akçam said.
"A climate has been created such that to attack and persecute an
intellectual is considered a patriotic act,’ he said, adding, `the
media targets and attacks intellectuals and turns them into prey…
the justice system punishes the intellectuals, and thugs are used as
pawns to attack and kill the targeted intellectuals.’
What he called the atmosphere of intolerance in Turkey has
worsened, rather than improved, in the year following Dink’s murder,
Akçam said.
‘Repeal Article 301′
Akçam called on Turkey to abolish Article 301 of the Turkish Penal
Code, which criminalizes `insulting Turkishness,’ under which Dink
had been prosecuted.
Turkey does not have to formally label World War I-era killings of
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as `genocide’ to resolve the dispute
with Armenians, Akçam said, speaking at the Southeast Europe Project
at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a Washington-based research center. A
Turkish move to accept "the crimes committed against Armenians" and
apologize or make a related gesture would solve the problem, he said.
The Ottomans had decided to remove the Armenians from their homes
as early as 1913, shortly after their defeat in the Balkan War, Akçam
said, disputing the Turkish argument that an Armenian rebellion in
cooperation with invading Russian forces in eastern Anatolia had
prompted the Ottoman government to forcibly relocate Armenians. He
gave no evidence, however, only saying he had proved it in his new
book.
Some Armenians in Istanbul and western Anatolia had also been
deported, Akçam added, but again he gave no evidence, only referring
to his book.He supported Ankara’s proposal for the creation of a
joint Turkish-Armenian commission of historians to probe the genocide
claim, adding that such a project would not work if Turkey did not
set up diplomatic and other relations with Armenia.