HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH SAYS TURKISH COURT PROTECTS DINK’S KILLERS
asbarez
Thursday, January 19th, 2012
Human Rights Watch
ISTANBUL–A Turkish court’s verdict on January 17, that there was
no state involvement or organized plot behind the 2007 shooting of
the Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink is a travesty of justice,
Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.
“The Istanbul court’s denial of the plot behind Hrant Dink’s murder
flies in the face of evidence,” said Emma Sinclair-Webb, Turkey
researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Five years after the killing,
Turkey’s criminal justice system remains unwilling to probe state
collusion in political assassinations.”
Istanbul Heavy Penal Court No. 14 acquitted all 19 defendants accused
of being part of a criminal organization responsible for Dink’s murder
on January 19, 2007. The court concluded that the crime was not the
work of a criminal organization motivated by ideological aims and
that there was no deeper plot behind the murder.
The court sentenced Yasin Hayal to aggravated life imprisonment, up
to 40 years in prison, for planning and organizing Dink’s murder by
17-year-old Ogun Samast. The court also sentenced Ahmet Ä°skender and
Ersin Yolcu, as accessories to the murder, to 12 years and 6 months
imprisonment and Salih Hacısalioglu to 10 months for possession of
unlicensed ammunition.
Erhan Tuncel, who faced the same charges as Hayal, was acquitted
of any involvement and sentenced to 10 years and 6 months for an
entirely separate crime in September 2004: the bombing of a branch
of McDonald’s in Trabzon. Fifteen other defendants facing various
charges in connection with the case were acquitted.
Samast, tried separately in a juvenile court, was convicted in July
2011, and sentenced to almost 23 years in prison for shooting Dink dead
in the street in front of the Istanbul offices of the Agos newspaper,
of which he was the founding editor. All the defendants are from the
Pelitli district of Trabzon, in Turkey’s eastern Black Sea region.
“The court’s treatment of the murder as a straightforward crime
committed in isolation by a few young men belies the evidence of their
deep connections with the security forces,” Sinclair-Webb said. “It
ignored the systematic failure by the Istanbul and Trabzon police
and gendarmerie to take steps to try to prevent a murder they were
repeatedly informed would happen,”
The final statement of the prosecutor in the trial pointed to the
existence of a criminal network, with links to the ultranationalist
Ergenekon gang, among whose alleged members are state officials
and members of the security forces who are currently on trial for
plotting a coup. The prosecutor indicated that the evidence to prove
the Ergenekon gang connection had been destroyed. But the prosecutor’s
investigation failed to follow many leads or to push for the inquiry
to be broadened, Human Rights Watch said. The prosecutor, as well as
lawyers for the Dink family, said they will appeal.
Tuncel had worked as an informer for both the Trabzon police and
the gendarmerie. The Trabzon police and gendarmerie, and police in
Istanbul, were repeatedly alerted to a plot to kill Dink, but failed
to take measures to prevent it.
The prosecutor’s investigation failed to press for the prosecution
of state authorities who repeatedly withheld evidence during the
investigation and contaminated other evidence. Both the prosecutor and
the court in turn failed at every stage to use the authority of the
criminal justice system to secure the compliance of state authorities
in a criminal investigation and murder trial proceedings.
Dink, the founding editor of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian
newspaper Agos, was a courageous champion of open debate, dialogue,
and cooperation among all communities in Turkey, and was committed
to democratization and human rights. His killing was apparently
politically and ethnically motivated. He was identified by
his murderers as an Armenian who had been convicted in court for
“insulting Turkishness.”
Dink had been prosecuted for an article in which he discussed Armenian
identity. In July 2006, the General Penal Board of the Court of
Cassation, Turkey’s court of appeal, upheld a six-month suspended
sentence for that publication under Article 301 of the Turkish penal
code that criminalized “publicly insulting Turkishness.” Dink was
prosecuted again in September 2006, under the same provision, for
using the term “genocide” in a statement made to the Reuters news
agency to describe the massacres of Armenians in Anatolia at the end
of the Ottoman Empire.
In September 2010, the European Court of Human Rights delivered a
tough verdict against Turkey for failure to protect Dink’s life,
failure to investigate his murder, and failure to uphold his right
to freedom of expression.
“The government has a clear duty to implement the judgment of
the European Court, to cooperate fully to ensure that the full
circumstances of state collusion in Dink’s murder are thoroughly
investigated and that state officials are not protected,” said
Sinclair-Webb.