Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Jan 18 2015
8 years after Dink’s murder: Hopes fading as guilty public officials
still not incriminated
A scene from a commemoration ceremony held in front of the Agos
newspaper lasty year to mark seventh anniversary of Dink murder.
(Photo: DHA)
January 18, 2015, Sunday/ 18:58:02/ YONCA POYRAZ DOÄ?AN / ISTANBUL
It has been eight years since Hrant Dink, a Turkish citizen of
Armenian decent and the editor-in-chief of the Turkish-Armenian weekly
Agos, was murdered on Jan. 19, 2007 in broad daylight in Ä°stanbul,
after receiving threats in public; yet, several public officials who
allegedly had knowledge of the planned murder but did not act to
prevent it have not been held accountable.
However, there might be a ray of hope, at last!
Two police officers were arrested on Jan. 13 on charges of negligence
and misconduct in the murder of Dink. One of them is Ã-zkan Mumcu,
Trabzon Police Department assistant commissioner, and the other is
police officer Mühittin Zenit, from the same police department.
Is this development meaningful for the case, which almost came to
closure after the hit man Ogün Samast was punished, despite the Dink
family’s lawyers having presented evidence indicating that Samast did
not act alone?
Yes and no, according to close observers of the case.
`The new indictment in the case should include all suspected public
officials from the Ä°stanbul Governor’s Office, the Trabzon Police
Department, the Trabzon Gendarmerie Command, the Ä°stanbul Police
Department and the Ä°stanbul Police Department Intelligence Bureau.
There are enough facts that require this. Otherwise, the legitimacy of
the indictment will be questioned,’ said Hakan BakırcıoÄ?lu, a lawyer
representing the Dink family.
He pointed out the fact that there are tape recordings of a phone
conversation between Zenit and Erhan Tuncel, an informant for the
Trabzon Police Department who was accused of initiating plans to have
Dink murdered. And according to the conversation, Zenit knew about the
plot to murder Dink. The recording had become public in 2007 and was
presented to the court by the lawyers of the Dink family, along with
other evidence.
In addition, the lawyers for Dink’s family filed a complaint in 2011
with the Ä°stanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office against former
Ä°stanbul Deputy Governor Ergun Güngör, former Ä°stanbul Police Chief
Celalettin Cerrah, the former chief of the Ä°stanbul Police
Department’s intelligence unit, Ahmet Ä°lhan Güngör, and six other
police officers on the grounds that those public officials were
negligent in preventing Dink’s murder.
After the complaint, the chief public prosecutor’s office applied to
the Ä°stanbul Governor’s Office to ask for permission to investigate
those listed public officials. However, the governor’s office did not
give permission.
BakırcıoÄ?lu also pointed to another piece of evidence that had been
presented to the court long ago: a report prepared at 9:30 p.m. on
Jan. 20, 2007, at the Trabzon Gendarmerie Command, which included the
exact features of the gun used by Samast.
`However, Samast was captured at 11 p.m. on the same day at the Samsun
bus station and the murder weapon was seized at that time. This means
that officials at the Trabzon Gendarmerie Command knew about the
features of the gun even though the gun had not yet been seized,’ he
said.
Public outrage increased over injustices
Then why is there a renewed trial process, as the case ended two years
ago when the Ä°stanbul 14th High Criminal Court reached a verdict on
Jan. 17, 2012 establishing that the suspects had no ties to a larger
crime network and had acted alone?
BakırcıoÄ?lu said that part of it is due to the requirements of the
European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which ruled against Turkey,
saying that Turkey had not prevented the murder of the journalist and
did not carry out an effective investigation afterwards. The court
both fined Turkey, ordering it to pay Dink’s family compensation of
105,000 euros, and called for an effective investigation to find out
the role of public officials in the murder.
`Yes, the ECtHR ruling has a role in the renewed court process, but
there is also another thing: the public has never been satisfied with
the verdict and showed outrage,’ BakırcıoÄ?lu said.
The renewed process started in September of last year, when the
Ä°stanbul 5th High Criminal Court complied with a ruling from the
Supreme Court of Appeals in May 2013 overturning the lower court
ruling that acquitted suspects in the Dink murder case of forming a
terrorist organization. This decision paved the way for the trial of
public officials on the charge of voluntary manslaughter.
There were also separate investigations going on, including in
Ä°stanbul and in Trabzon, in relation to Dink’s murder, and despite
Dink family lawyers’ demands, they were not merged. Toward the end of
last year, they were finally combined.
`So far, the court has heard the testimony of about 50 public
officials in recent months. The prosecutor requested arrest for some
of them, but most of them were released pending trial with
restrictions on leaving the country,’ BakırcıoÄ?lu said.
Another development in the new case is that prosecutor Gökalp Kökçü,
of the Ä°stanbul Terrorism and Organized Crimes Unit, is holding the
suspects responsible for voluntary manslaughter, in line with Article
83 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK).
`This article relates to any person causing death of another person
due to a failure to perform a legal obligation or requirement. The
punishment for the act is imprisonment for up to 25 years,’ he said.
`We’ve been demanding this for eight years’
However, there are reasons to be skeptical about the renewed trial
process, said many members of the Friends of Hrant group, among them
Ã-zlem Dalkıran.
`We are not so happy because two police officers have been arrested,’
Dalkıran said, adding that there are many names involved, and some of
them are top officials who are still serving as public officials.
`If the court identifies only the low-ranking officers and not their
chiefs, then that means there is no effort to bring high-level public
officials to justice.’
One of those suspects is Ercan Demir, who was a police officer with
the Trabzon Police Department’s Intelligence Unit when Dink was
murdered, and he is still a police chief in the southeastern town of
Cizre.
As of the writing this news story, and Ä°stanbul penal court of peace
issued an arrest warrant for Demir on Jan. 16, on charges of
“negligence over the murder” of Hrant Dink.
There are some other suspects who later received promotions, said
investigative journalist Ä°smail Saymaz, discussing the issue on a live
television show recently.
`Another suspect, Engin Dinç, who was also called to court recently
for testimony related to the Dink case, has been promoted to the
intelligence department in Ankara. He used to be the branch chief of
the Trabzon intelligence unit,’ he said on CNNTürk.
`The state is famous for its tradition of promoting public officials
who are suspected criminals,’ he added.
Another concern is that the battle between the government and the
faith-based Gülen movement, inspired by Islamic scholar Fethullah
Gülen, will lead to acts of revenge on part of the government.
Observers worry that this will lead to the punishment of only a few
low-key police officers, according to the wishes of the government and
not the rule of law.
A massive corruption scandal that went public on Dec. 17 and 25, 2013
implicated key government figures and people close to then-Prime
Minister and now President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄ?an, and a
government-dominated parliamentary corruption commission recently
rejected sending the former government ministers who were accused of
graft to face trial. The Justice and Development Party (AK Party)
officials claim that the corruption scandal is the work of a `parallel
state’ related to the Gülen movement, seeking to topple his
government.
Meaning of 1954-1915
The latest issue of Agos, the Turkish-Armenian weekly published in
Turkey, has a headline story on the topic. It says: `Eight years have
passed since Hrant Dink was shot in the back in front of his
newspaper, Agos. Eight years, from 2007 to 2015, passed while waiting
for justice to be served. But that is not it. Since 1915, 100 years
have passed with the same expectation and demand. Jan. 19, 2015 is the
anniversary of Hrant Dink’s death. For us, it is, at the same time,
the beginning: April 24, 1915, when the journey of the Armenian
intellectuals of Ä°stanbul ended in death. 1915 was the year when
Armenians of Anatolia were wiped out, together with their Assyrian
[also known as the Syriacs and Chaldeans] neighbors in some regions.’
Hundreds of thousands of people march every year on Jan. 19 to support
Dink’s family and demand justice.
Dink was best known for his willingness to debate critically the
issues of Armenian identity and the official versions of history in
Turkey related to the massacres of Armenians in 1915. He was
prosecuted for expressing his opinions.
In 2005, he was given a six-month suspended prison sentence after he
was accused of denigrating “Turkishness” in writings about the
identity of Turkish citizens of Armenian origin.
The ECtHR ruled that Turkey had violated Dink’s right to freedom of
expression in prosecuting and convicting him for “denigration of
Turkishness” and for failing to protect him from an ensuing hate
campaign by ultra-nationalists.
Friends of Hrant Dink made a call this year saying:`Fight for Hrant,
fight against genocide¦ 1954-1915′
Dink was born in 1954. When asked for the meaning of the call, Yetvart
Danzikyan, a journalist-researcher, said speaking on behalf of the
Friends of Hrant Dink group, `Planning, organizing and protecting the
murderers of the 1915 genocide involved all state mechanisms, just as
the murder of Hrant Dink was planned, committed and the murderers have
been protected. It has been a continuation of 1915, the last link of
the genocide chain.’
Dink’s family stopped regularly attending the court hearings in
September 2013, and their decision represented a turning point,
indicating that they have lost faith in the justice system.
Part of the statement from the Dink family dated Sept. 16, 2013
read:`In order not to become dirtier, we will not step into those
courthouses where lies are so easily said, force so easily used, and
rightfulness, truth, rights and justice so easily stepped on. ¦ Since
the day Hrant Dink was slain on Jan. 19, 2007, the system in Turkey,
with its judiciary, police, military, civilian bureaucracy and
political institutions, have made fun of us. ¦ On the other hand,
opposition parties, with their attitude toward Article 301 and support
for ultranationalist feelings and breeding hit men, were the main
actors in the climate of murder. ¦ We will be where we are and where
are supposed be: on the side of those who were killed by the sticks of
the state.’
________________________________
How it all started
Fethiye Çetin, chief lawyer for Hrant Dink’s family, wrote on the
third anniversary of Dink’s assassination the details of how Dink was
publicly targeted:
`Upon the coverage of news articles in Agos on 6 February 2004 and
later on in Hürriyet Daily which noted that `Atatürk’s adopted
daughter Sabiha Gökçen was an Armenian girl from an orphanage,’ the
General Staff issued an extremely harsh statement against these
articles while making it very clear where the boundaries of the
freedom of the press ends and where the duties of Turkish citizens and
organizations begin. The individuals and organizations who received
this message started acting from the next day onwards.
`Right after this statement, Hrant Dink was summoned to the Ä°stanbul
governorate. The meeting was held in the office of Ergun Güngör, the
deputy governor responsible for carrying out procedures related to
minority issues, and was attended by two intelligence officers; the
meeting was described by Hrant Dink as the beginning of an operation
that aimed to teach him a lesson, and in his article he wrote `I am
now a target.’ As Ã-zer Yılmaz, one of the intelligence officers
present at that meeting, became a defendant in the Ergenekon case, it
turned out that those who were present at the meeting were indeed
high-ranking intelligence officers. In its correspondence sent to the
Court on July 19, 2010, literally three years after the murder, the
Undersecretariat of the National Intelligence Organization (MIT)
acknowledged the meeting and confirmed the meeting attendants being
MIT members.
`Two days after this meeting, during a demonstration staged in front
of the Agos Newspaper, Levent Temiz, head of Ä°stanbul Provincial
Branch of Ã`lkü Ocakları (Turk-Islam Idealists) made the following
statement on behalf of the demonstrating group, `From now on, Hrant
Dink will be the object of our rage and hatred, he is our target.’
`A similar demonstration took place a few days later, again in front
of Agos, held by the `Federation of Fight against Unfounded Armenian
Allegations.’
`Immediately after these incidents, a new smear campaign was launched
which picked just a single sentence from Hrant Dink’s article series
entitled `On Armenian Identity’ and used it as a pretext. Some
individuals and organizations filed complaints against Hrant Dink by
identical petitions.’
http://www.todayszaman.com/national_8-years-after-dinks-murder-hopes-fading-as-guilty-public-officials-still-not-incriminated_370208.html