DDK REPORT’S CENSORED PAGES CALL FOR PROBE OF STATE OFFICIALS IN DINK CASE
Sunday’s Zaman
Feb 24 2012
Turkey
The undisclosed sections of a report prepared by the State Audit
Institution (DDK) regarding the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist
Hrant Dink openly accuse police and intelligence officials of
negligence in the murder and call for the investigation of certain
individuals, the Haberturk daily reported on Friday.
The presidential watchdog announced its report earlier this week on
the Office of the President’s website. The report said mistakes were
made in the investigation of public officials who were suspected
of having acted negligently in preventing the murder, adding that
a sequence of negligent acts by public officials was not examined
as a whole and that no investigation was launched separately into
different state institutions.
However, six pages of the long-expected report were censored,
reportedly due to state secrecy concerns, arousing curiosity among
the public over what information they contained. Haberturk, claiming
to have obtained the full report, said on Friday that the censored
sections level serious and explicit accusations against police and
gendarmerie officers and the Ä°stanbul Governor’s Office.
The six pages also reportedly say there is sufficient evidence to file
charges of negligence against certain officials in the Ä°stanbul and
Trabzon police departments. The report adds that prosecutors failed to
file charges against members of the National Intelligence Organization
(MÄ°T) who reportedly “warned” Dink to be careful when writing his
articles prior to his assassination in 2007.
According to Dink’s own account published in Agos, of which he
was editor-in-chief, on Jan. 12, 2007, MÄ°T Marmara Regional Deputy
Director Ozel Yılmaz and another agent summoned Dink to the İstanbul
Governor’s Office and warned him, telling him to “be careful” about
what he wrote. The meeting took place on Feb. 4, 2004, shortly after
Dink wrote an article asserting that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s daughter,
Sabiha Gökcen, was of Armenian descent.
After Dink’s assassination, one of the MÄ°T agents who had spoken with
him at the governor’s office that day was revealed to be Yılmaz,
who is currently a suspect in the investigation into Ergenekon — a
clandestine gang charged with plotting to overthrow the government —
which prosecutors say might also be responsible for Dink’s murder.
Furthermore, in response to a query about the meeting from the
Ä°stanbul 14th High Criminal Court, MÄ°T said the organization was
aware of the “meeting” with Dink and its agents at the time.
Haberturk also reported that the full DDK report underlines that
the Trabzon Police Department sent a notice to the Ä°stanbul Police
Department on Feb. 17, 2006, warning them about an assassination plot
against Dink based on intelligence received from Erhan Tuncel — a
police informant in Trabzon. The report also said this information
was not shared with the Trabzon Gendarmerie Command, although the
plot concerned individuals in the town of Pelitli, which fell under
the gendarmerie command’s jurisdiction. Despite this information no
action was taken to prevent the murder, and a fake report was prepared
following Dink’s assassination, the report said.
The DDK also reportedly discovered that information about a possible
assassination plot against Dink was received by the Trabzon Gendarmerie
Command from other sources. Although there was clear intelligence that
those plotting to kill Dink were obtaining arms, the gendarmerie did
not give any importance to this information and did not share it with
any judicial body, the report puts forth.
Dink, the late editor-in-chief of Agos, was shot dead by an
ultranationalist teenager outside the offices of his newspaper in
broad daylight in Ä°stanbul on Jan. 19, 2007.
Gul ordered the DDK to investigate the Dink murder last year, following
growing calls from the public and a European Court of Human Rights
(ECtHR) ruling that found Turkey guilty of failing to protect Dink’s
right to life and of carrying out a thorough investigation into the
officers who failed to take the necessary measures in light of early
warnings and tips about the plot to kill Dink. The investigation that
followed Dink’s death revealed that police had been tipped off about
plans to murder the journalist; however, police failed to intervene.
Deputy PM: Court’s reasoned decision adds to ‘darkness’ surrounding
Dink case In a related development, Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag
commented on the reasoned decision announced by an Ä°stanbul court on
Thursday on the killing of Dink. The Ä°stanbul 14th High Criminal Court
said in its 216-page-long reasoned decision, distributed to lawyers
involved in the case on Thursday, that the court could not establish
that the journalist was killed by an organized criminal network.
Bozdag said by acknowledging that there is wider involvement in the
murder but failing to prove it, the court added more to the “darkness”
of the case. “I am not sure whether it is logical for the court to
accept the involvement of an organization in the murder but to say
that it cannot see it. The reasoned decision has been yet another dark
curtain. … The decision failed to light a candle to shed light in
this darkness,” he said.
In what many said was a shocking and frustrating ruling in the
five-year-long trial of the Dink case, the Ä°stanbul court last
month cleared all suspects of charges of membership in a criminal
organization, angering lawyers and many others who say the trial
failed to clarify alleged connections between the suspects and state
officials. The court convicted Yasin Hayal, a major suspect in the
killing of Turkish-Armenian journalist Dink, of instigating a murder
and sentenced him to life in prison. Another suspected instigator,
Tuncel, was acquitted by the court.