Rudaw.net
Jan 22 2011
Killing Hrant Dink Twice
22/01/2011 11:51:00 By ZAFER YÖRÜK
`I don’t know why the Turks can’t admit it, express sorrow and go on.
That’s the worst. You do all these things to the victim and then you
say it never happened. That is killing them twice.’ This was the
commentary of Thomas Burgenthal, an Auschwitz survivor, lawyer and a
member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, on the Turkish
state’s persistent denial of the Armenian genocide.
On January 19th 2011, we commemorated the fourth anniversary of the
assassination of the prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink,
and even the metaphor `killing twice’ would be insufficient to
describe what has (not) happened during the four years that have
passed without Dink.
Immediately after the murder, two assassins were arrested by the
police, which inspired some hope among Turkey’s democratic opposition.
However, the Dink trials have continued for four years without
tangible progress and none of the conspirers behind the assassination
have been brought to justice. It is a well-known secret that these
conspirers include high-ranking military and civilian bureaucrats,
whom both the government and the judiciary obviously lack the courage
to touch. In fact, evidence so far indicates that the government,
along with the bureaucracy and the military, has been institutionally
involved in the obstruction and perversion of the course of justice.
The Turkish `defense’
One of these indicators is the government’s defense in the European
Court of Human Rights (ECHR), in regard to the conviction of Dink for
`insulting Turkishness’ prior to his assassination. Dink, founder and
chief editor of the Armenian weekly newspaper, Agos, was prosecuted on
the grounds of his comments about Armenian identity and the
recognition of the Armenian genocide. He was convicted under Article
301 of the Turkish Criminal Code, against which he appealed at the
ECHR. After his assassination, Dink’s family made a further appeal to
the court due to the negligence of authorities in preventing the
murder. The ECHR merged both appeals.
In August 2010, the Turkish state submitted its defense to the ECHR,
referring to the `Kühnen case’ previously tried before the
international court. The ECHR had approved the decision by German
courts to convict Kühnen, a neo-Nazi who had spread anti-Semitic
speeches in various pamphlets. The Turkish state argued in their
analogy that Dink similarly `incited the public to hatred’ through
`hate speech’ and therefore he had deserved the conviction.
The ECHR convicted the Turkish state on both counts, that is, unlawful
conviction and negligence in preventing the murder. The merger of the
appeals and the conviction imply that Turkey’s judiciary, bureaucracy
and government were all involved in the murder of Hrant Dink. The
government’s defense, on the other hand, represents its hegemonic
nationalist mentality and yet another typical act of `killing twice.’
Neurosis and thuggery
Sigmund Freud said: `The neurotic repeats without remembering.’ In
fact, the very compulsion to repeat is a neurotic symptom that emerges
from the urge to maintain the repression of the memory of a certain
event in the unconscious. In other words, for the psychologically
disturbed personality, `killing twice’ is a necessity.
Nationalist discourses that concur with each other over the systematic
denial of the Armenian genocide involve the repetition of the original
act of murder (the Armenian genocide) through degradation of the
Armenian identity. They unite the official and popular versions of
nationalism in a chorus of denial of the historical events, driven by
fantasies of an Armenian `masterplan’ for Turkey’s disintegration.
According to Professor Colin Tatz, an Australian academic, “Turkey has
used a mix of academic sophistication and diplomatic thuggery to put
both memory and history in reverse gear.’
Most of the thuggery has in fact been directed against Turkish
citizens domestically, where any mention of the Armenian genocide is
liable to be punished by the Turkish state, with the possibility of it
then leading to lynch mob action or even political assassination.
However, the events that these symptomatic acts aim to erase from the
memory inevitably keep on coming up in occasional outbursts,
analogical to what Freud called the `slips of the tongue’: `Let us be
clear to the world’s public: in the past we punished all the infamous
half-casts, who, not content with profiting from our lands, attacked
our possessions, the lives and honor of the Turks. We know that our
forefathers were right, and if we were to face such threats again, we
would not hesitate to do what is necessary.’ (Akit, February 12th
2001).
Obstructing the facts
Hrant Dink tried to exist as an Armenian democrat in the aggressive
nationalist environment of this country, where, despite international
guarantees, the Armenian minority have been systematically degraded,
silenced and persecuted. A consequence of these policies has been the
constant decrease in Turkey’s Armenian population since the 1920s,
from 300,000 to around 60,000 in 2006. In fact, Hrant Dink’s
assassination has been perceived by many as a major link in this chain
of sustained harassment.
In Hrant’s radically democratic personality, the Armenian community of
Turkey had found, for the first time, an internationally recognized
representative, who courageously broke a ninety-year-long silence over
the Armenian genocide and addressed the constant denial, degradation
and persecution that have been in effect ever since. Hrant Dink led
the Armenian community to break out of their shell by linking the
cause of his people with the broader democratic movement in Turkey.
The court conviction of `insulting Turkishness’ was certainly an
attempt to silence this courageous voice, and in effect made Dink a
natural target of hardline nationalists. He began to receive death
threats and on one occasion he was threatened by Istanbul’s vice
governor. Eventually, on January 19th 2007, Dink fell victim to a
planned murder, which was committed in the centre of Istanbul.
For the last four years, the obstruction of the course of justice –
the attempts to cover up the institutional involvement of the Turkish
state in this assassination, and to maintain the immunity from justice
of the state officials responsible – seems to have united the Turkish
judiciary and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government in a
`holy alliance,’ while on other issues they are constantly engaged in
an almost bloody dispute. There are rumors that the two assassins
could also be released from prison next year if the trial continues at
its current snail pace.
Historian Taner Akçam comments that `many of the Turkish efforts aimed
to obscure the facts, rather than dispute a false charge.’ Through
these efforts, Turkish nationalism is `killing twice’ history’s
millions of victims. And the Turkish government and legal system have
similarly been killing Hrant Dink twice through their systematic
obstruction of the facts of this shameful murder.
Zafer Yörük taught political theory at University of London between
1997 and 2006. His research interests range across politics of
identity, discourse analysis and psychoanalysis. He writes a column
for Rudaw every Friday from Izmir.
From: A. Papazian
http://www.rudaw.net/english/science/columnists/3422.html