Dink case and democratization
18 January 2013, Friday
MARKAR ESAYAN
[email protected]
Six years have passed since Turkish-Armenian journalist and Agos
newspaper editor-in-chief Hrant Dink left us, on Jan. 19, 2007. His
departure from this world didn’t take place naturally but was from an
assassination that came slowly and visibly. Dink loved his country so
much and was such a well-meaning person that those who knew him, i.e.,
us, nurtured the naïve conviction that no one would want to hurt him.
He thought so too. During the last several years of his life, he was
caught in an ever-narrowing trap.
All hell broke loose when the Hürriyet daily published a news story
about Dink’s well-documented claim that Sabiha Gökçen, the adopted
daughter of the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and
Turkey’s first female pilot, was the daughter of an Armenian who died
during the forced relocation of Armenians in 1915. The General Staff
made a statement that directly targeted Dink. This statement referred
to the `dangers of raising questions about national values.’ That day
was a turning point. On the day after the General Staff’s statement,
some people filed with the prosecutor’s office an official complaint
about an article that Dink had written long ago. And, of course, the
prosecutor brought a criminal case against Dink and this was the
beginning of an adjudication process that made him the target of
hatred. As you might recall, Dink was on trial on charges of
`denigrating Turkishness’ under the infamous Article 301 of the
Turkish Penal Code (TCK). The number 301 was like a secret code, or a
password. At that time, a person who was handled under Article 301
would be considered as `finished off.’ Such people would have been
advised to find a way to get out of the country.
Like us, Dink didn’t pay much attention to such advice. There were
several reasons for this. First of all, Dink — and we — knew well
that he didn’t denigrate Turkishness in his article and believed that
the court would quickly see this simple fact and acquit him. Since
2002, Turkey has entered a process of rapid chance and reforms. The
ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has been taking
decisive steps to make the country a full member of the European
Union. Perhaps it was exactly for this reason why some groups wanted
to kill Dink: to abort this process.
In his contested article, Dink had told the Armenian diaspora that
1915 had poisoned them and they should establish contact with the
newly established Armenia instead of building their identity on this
trauma and anti-Turkish sentiments. In doing so, he used a metaphor
from the Turkish national anthem to make his narration more evocative.
We are talking about a sentence singled out from a series of articles.
This sentence was taken out of context on purpose. Moreover, court
experts reported that this sentence did not have any defamatory
intentions.
Despite these expert reports, the local court and the then Supreme
Court of Appeals held that Dink was guilty. Crowds would gather in
front of the court building before every hearing carrying placards
reading, `You are the son of a Christian missionary and you are an
enemy of Turks,’ and soon Dink started to be known as an anti-Turkish
figure despite his efforts to repair his public image. Several
prominent people who are currently on trial under a criminal case
against Ergenekon were openly attacking him. They said that Dink was
spreading anti-Turkish sentiments and were using nationalistic,
provocative language while doing so. They were implying that Christian
missionaries wanted to destabilize Turkey and convert Turks to
Christianity. This missionary talk was continuously pumped to the
general public in the context of the debate about Dink. Certain media
outlets and certain columnists published extremely racist articles
against Dink. They went crazy, particularly during an Armenian
conference held for the first time in the history of Turkey in 2005 to
discuss the 1915 incidents from all perspectives. Once again, hundreds
of people gathered in front of Bilgi University, where this conference
was held, and were again carrying placards that frequently referred to
`missionaries’ and `Armenians’ in a libelous manner.
Threats began to arrive
During this process, Dink was receiving serious threats. He didn’t
care about the threats against his person, but the death threats were
also targeting his family. He filed official complaints about these
threats, but to no avail. He had taken personal measures. For
instance, he was no longer using his own car. But the authorities had
not provided him with protection. And although Agos was a dangerous
place, no security measures had been taken.
Of course, this was the side of the coin as we saw it at that time.
After Dink was murdered on Jan. 19, 2007, many documents and pieces of
information were destroyed, but the Dink family and their lawyers had
presented many pieces of evidence to the court. Then we had a chance
to see the other side of the coin. And it was truly horrific. Dink had
been the victim of a murder that came about slowly, but most
importantly, the state knew about it and had watched it happen. It was
as if everyone except Dink knew that he would be killed in a few
years.
The notice about the first murder attempt came in 2005. The
gendarmerie authorities in Trabzon were aware that the main suspect of
the murder, Yasin Hayal, was on the move. Erhan Tuncel, an informant
working for the police and gendarmerie, was also known to have played
a key role in the murder. Hayal’s brother-in-law, CoÅ?kun Ä°Ä?ci, had
told gendarmerie officials that Hayal was preparing to kill Dink in a
provocative manner and had given money to Ä°Ä?ci in order to buy a gun
for Hayal. The Ä°stanbul Police Department knew that Hayal had come to
Ä°stanbul to plan the murder. Many developments concerning Dink’s
murder were known to intelligence authorities.
But nothing was done. Although a very simple measure could have
prevented this murder, no one moved a finger and Dink was murdered in
front of his newspaper on Jan. 19, 2007.
A failure of justice
The criminal case launched in connection with the murder was
scandalous in all aspects. Everyone was sure that the blame would be
placed on the young contract killers and effectively covered up. But
for the sake of justice, Dink’s lawyers and the general public never
stopped getting more from the case. Perhaps this was a first in the
history of the republic. For the first time, the general public did
not quickly forget a trial but continued to pay close attention to
this case. The media kept interest on this murder case alive. Despite
this unceasing internal and external attention, the trial focused on
19 defendants. Speaking to the Taraf daily, Fethiye Çetin, the lawyer
for the Dink family, explained this as follows:
`You know the criminal case was brought against 19 defendants. I then
realized that all of my efforts to expand the case beyond these 19
defendants failed. In a sense, we were not allowed to go beyond this
framework. Lots of evidential documents and information were lost but
coincidentally, new evidence was found on various occasions. Based on
the new evidence, we demanded that the prosecutor and the court expand
the scope of the case. But our demands were never taken seriously. It
seemed as if the limits of the case had been predefined and any breach
of them wouldn’t be permitted.
`This applied not only to the police and prosecutors but also to other
public authorities as well. For instance, the process about the phone
records at the Telecommunications Directorate [TÄ°B] was like this. It
said, `There is nothing in the telephone records of the place of
murder to show that any organization was involved in the murder.’ But
even our amateurish examinations could find a number of links. The
prosecutor has been holding an investigation file for the last six
years. This file was merged with the official complaints which we
filed about certain public officials. But no concrete steps were taken
over this file in the last six years. Now, we want the prosecutor to
take those steps.’
Recently, a report sent by the National Intelligence Organization
(MÄ°T) to a parliamentary commission investigating coups and military
interventions made mention of the plans of a `network that is above
Ergenekon’ which sought to overthrow the ruling AK Party. Realizing
that they couldn’t overthrow the AK Party through a traditional coup,
the junta members used the Special Warfare Department (Ã-HD) of the
General Staff to plan an unconventional coup. Based on the six letters
from whistle-blowing military officers, MÄ°T’s report argued that
Dink’s murder had been planned and implemented by the Ã-HD. Çetin, too,
made a similar observation about the organization that killed Dink:
`I was Dink’s lawyer before his murder, so I knew the run-up to the
murder very well. As far as I can see, there is multi-organizational
network nested deep within the state apparatus. It is a powerful,
well-organized and untouchable network. `Is it Ergenekon?’ I was asked
many times. I believe that a more ghastly network than Ergenekon is at
work. I can see this clearly when I look at the process of Dink’s
murder and the actors involved in it. Some of these actors are
currently standing trial in the criminal case against Ergenekon, but
there are also many actors at large. It is a network that has furrowed
deeper into the state and is more tenuous. We can find it if we follow
these trails. We are faced with a network which planned the whole
process as though it was one of its operations, carefully planned and
implemented the run-up to Dink’s murder, advertised it as a rage of a
handful of nationalist youths, meddled with the investigation and
prosecution phases and destroyed the evidence.’
And justice is still not done after six years. Yet solving the Dink’s
murder means more than the fulfillment of a simple demand for justice.
It is an opportunity for the democratization and cleaning up of the
Turkish state. I hope politicians see this and lend support to the
solution.