PLOT CONCOCTED OVER DINK MURDER TO SMEAR HIZMET MOVEMENT AS TERRORIST
Today’s Zaman, Turkey
March 13 2015
A new plan attempting to designate the Gulen movement — also known as
Hizmet — as a terrorist organization has been put into practice
following President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hinting that the movement
might be behind the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink
in 2007, several lawyers linked to the case have said.
The recent testimony of the hitman who killed Dink, Ogun Samast,
has reportedly been the first step to serve the intended goal by
Erdogan to smear the Hizmet movement.
Speaking with Today’s Zaman regarding the plot against Hizmet,
Huseyin Ataol, a lawyer representing a police chief over accusations
of negligence relating to the Dink murder, stressed that an obvious
attempt is underway to portray Hizmet as a terrorist organization.
“In order to designate a group as terrorist, an armed attack is a
prerequisite and the Dink murder will offer the missing link for those
who are engaged in the plot against Hizmet. Otherwise, their efforts
to convince the people that Hizmet is a terrorist group will yield
no result. They, along with the pro-government media, are trying to
absolve the real perpetrators,” Ataol noted.
The lawyer said the Dink murder has been chosen as one of many
incidents to defame Hizmet as a preparation to designate the movement
as an armed terrorist organization, which President Erdogan desires
and has allegedly instructed the judiciary.
The role of the pro-government media, such as the Sabah, AkÃ…~_am,
Yeni Ã…~^afak and Takvim dailies, in the plot against the movement
is considerable, as Erdogan’s spin-doctors have produced fabricated
reports on a daily basis to create the perception that the movement
has engaged in illegal acts.
In order to put the plan to eliminate Hizmet into action by creating a
connection with the killing of Dink, an application by Dink’s family
made in 2008 requesting an investigation into police chiefs who are
considered to have acted negligently in relation to the killing was
revived in 2014 to go after Hizmet.
Through the investigation, those police chiefs, Ramazan Akyurek and
Ali Fuat Yılmazer, along with several police officers who informed
the Ä°stanbul Police Department and other related departments on the
possibility of the killing of Dink by an ultra-nationalist group,
as official correspondences and reports also confirmed, were put in
jail and chosen as scapegoats to create the required link to designate
Hizmet as a terrorist group.
However, as Akyurek, who was the head of the Trabzon Police
intelligence department at the time of killing, sent a note warning
both the National Police Department’s intelligence unit and the
National Police Department in 2006 that there was going to be an
attempted assassination of Dink, he was arrested on charges of
“causing death by negligence.”
However, Engin Dinc, who headed the intelligence unit in Trabzon at
the time of Dink’s murder and now serves as the head of the National
Police Department’s intelligence unit, has even been asked to testify
in order to reveal the chain of negligence that resulted in Dink’s
death. This double standard upset the Dink family as the lawyer
representing the family applied to the court to request Dinc to be
compelled to testify over the issue.
Akyurek, who passed on the information concerning a possible assault on
Dink to the required departments, is now in prison, but those police
chiefs who served in Ä°stanbul and were informed of the possibility
of Dink’s murder failed to investigate the matter.
The two police chiefs, Akyurek and Yılmazer, who was former İstanbul
Police Department Intelligence Bureau chief, are accused of being
members of an armed terrorist organization, which may later be named
as Hizmet.
Seven years after the murder, Samast suddenly decided to testify
as a witness on Dec. 5, 2014, to Prosecutor Yusuf Hakkı Dogan. His
latest testimony differs from what he said in 2010. Most recently he
claimed that while at the house of Erhan Tuncel, an informant for the
Trabzon Police Department who was accused of initiating efforts to
have Dink murdered, he overheard a conversation between two people
talking about Akyurek and Yılmazer.
Samast said that when he asked Yasin Hayal — another suspect in
the case who was sentenced to life in prison for inciting Samast to
commit the murder — about the names he overheard, he was told that
Tuncel knew these people and that they were behind the plot to kill
Dink. The testimony contradicts Samast’s 2010 deposition that led to
his conviction. He had earlier claimed that he did not know Tuncel
and that Hayal was acting as a liaison with Tuncel.
Also, three police officials — Ercan Demir, Ozkan Mumcu and Muhittin
Zenit — said in their testimonies that Dinc was the highest authority
at the Trabzon Police Department’s intelligence unit. Demir said
during his testimony, “The authority to inform provincial police
departments about suspects or conduct operations against suspects
belonged to Engin [Dinc].”
After the country’s worst corruption scandal became public on Dec. 17,
2013, which implicated Erdogan who was prime minister at that time
and his family, Erdogan pointed to the Hizmet movement and accused
it of plotting against his government via the graft scandal —
a baseless accusation.
However, Erdogan vowed to carry out a witch-hunt against members
of Hizmet after the revelation of the graft scandal and mobilized
the government and judiciary against the movement on the basis of
fabricated evidence linking Hizmet with various political murders
and illegal acts of which, in fact, government-related cliques were
the real perpetrators.
Erdogan and pro-gov’t media main actors of plot against Hizmet
Pro-government media outlets, such as the Sabah daily, used Samast’s
testimony to report on an alleged link between Dink’s murder and
Hizmet.
Lawyer Ataol emphasized that the current political sphere is very
convenient, in the light of Erdogan’s and the government’s attempts
to portray Hizmet as a terrorist group, adding that “the Ergenekon
organization [an armed terrorist group according to Turkish law
under a court’s decision] and the government is in collaboration to
eliminate Hizmet by [linking the murder with it]. It is known that
Ergenekon has a key role in the killing. Portraying Hizmet as being
responsible for the murder will also contribute to absolve members
of Ergenekon of the accusations of bringing down the government. The
government and Ergenekon have reconciled with each other.”
Adnan Ã…~^eker, a lawyer representing Akyurek, also noted that his
client did what his position required in order to prevent Dink from
being assassinated by sending a warning to the heads of all provinces’
intelligence units, in line with tip-offs by intelligence agents, of
planned attacks on the country’s Armenian citizens, as well as on Dink.
“In the light of this information, no one can claim negligence by
Akyurek linked to Dink’s murder. Furthermore, despite Akyurek’s
warnings, neither a bodyguard nor any kind of protection was given
to Dink. Plus, Dink was invited by several high-ranking Ä°stanbul
intelligence chiefs in Ä°stanbul and warned not to write about the
threats against him. Akyurek’s entire warnings were ignored.
“Samast’s changed testimony is full of contradictions when compared
to his previous one. It is obvious that he was instructed [to do this]
and a text of the testimony was delivered to him to accuse these police
chiefs of being members of a terrorist organization, thus clearing
the way to declare the Hizmet movement as terrorist,” Ã…~^eker added.
He underlined that Erdogan is the main figure behind the plot against
Hizmet and went on to say: “The day after Akyurek was arrested, Erdogan
told a group of journalists that instead of negligence [by officials],
a deliberate attempt to murder Dink is in question. These words confirm
that Erdogan is the one who has orchestrated the investigation of the
killing. How can a prosecutor make an independent decision following
Erdogan’s comments aiming to manage the probe in accordance with
his view? Through the subordinated judiciary, Erdogan is targeting
persons or groups.”
http://www.todayszaman.com/national_plot-concocted-over-dink-murder-to-smear-hizmet-movement-as-terrorist_375208.html