ARMENIAN PRIVATE KILLED INTENTIONALLY, NEW TESTIMONY SHOWS

TODAY’S ZAMAN
27 January 2012

A young man of Armenian descent who was killed while serving in
the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) as a conscripted private, which was
initially believed to be an accident, is likely a hate crime committed
because of the victim’s ethnic background, new testimony from another
private indicates.

Pvt. Sevag Å~^ahin Balıkcı was shot dead on April 24, 2011 — the
date the Armenian Diaspora has chosen to commemorate the incidents of
1915 when hundreds of Armenians were killed in the Ottoman Empire. The
other privates in his unit, stationed in Batman province, and other
officers testified that Balıkcı was shot accidentally when he
was “joking around” with a close friend, Kıvanc Agaoglu. However,
according to a report published in the Sabah daily on Friday, one of
the privates who witnessed the incident changed his testimony, which
will likely change the course of the trial of Agaoglu, the shooter.

The revised testimony was given in late December, according to Sabah’s
report. It wasn’t clear why there were no reports on it earlier.

Halil EkÅ~_i, who served in the military during the same period as
Sevag Balıkcı, in his revised testimony said, “Kıvanc pointed his
rifle at Sevag and pulled the trigger. His family had asked me to
testify in his favor,” indicating that Agaoglu’s family pressured
him into not describing what really happened.

They were serving at the Kozluk GumuÅ~_göru Gendarmerie Station at
the time of the murder.

The investigators in the initial stage of the probe were trying
to understand whether Balıkcı was really the victim of a hapless
accident or a murder committed with full intent. According to the
soldiers’ account, Balıkcı was shot by Agaoglu when they were
installing a chain-link fence around the gendarmerie station.

The family, mainly based on suspicions arising from the date of the
murder, had earlier filed criminal charges against Agaoglu claiming he
had wanted to kill their son and knew what he was doing when he fired
his rifle. Agaoglu’s lawyers asserted that their client was a very
close friend of Balıkcı, and his rifle fired by accident. Earlier
testimony from EkÅ~_i supported this statement. However, EkÅ~_i, who
testified once again on Dec. 27, 2011, said he wanted to change his
initial testimony. He said he did not see the suspect playing around
with the rifle and noted that Agaoglu’s uncle, Bulent Kaya, had visited
him in his hometown and in fact wrote his initial testimony with
him. He gave his first testimony on Sept. 9, 2011, in an Aydın court
after he was summoned. It wasn’t clear why he changed his testimony,
but the Balıkcı family lawyers had requested to hear him again on
the grounds that they weren’t present during the first testimony. This
is why EkÅ~_i was summoned once again by the Aydın 1st Criminal Court.

In his latest account, EkÅ~_i told the judge hearing his testimony:
“I was told by suspect Kıvanc and his family, especially his
uncle, to testify in his favor. On the day of the incident, we were
installing chain-link fencing around the station under orders from our
commanders. As we did our work, at some point, Kıvanc Agaoglu unlocked
his rifle’s safety and directed it at our other friend Sevag Å~^ahin.

And he fired the rifle. This way, Sevag Å~^ahin was wounded. I do
not know why Kıvanc fired at Sevag.”

From: Baghdasarian