Agence France Presse — English
January 19, 2007 Friday

Journalist murder revives memories of Turkey’s political killings

Burak Akinci

ANKARA, Jan 19 2007

The murder Friday of prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink
is only the latest in a long line of political killings Turkey has
had to suffer over the past three decades, observers said.

Although police gave no motive for the shooting in Istanbul, leaders
from all parties joined the media in immediately labelling it a
"political assassination."

"This is the worst thing that has happened to Turkey in recent
years," commented Erkan Mumcu, chairman of the conservative
opposition Motherland Party.

He said in a television interview that it would serve as fodder for
opponents of Ankara’s bid to join the European Union, already
critical of Turkey’s human rights record despite a marked improvement
in recent years.

"Nothing can justify such an act," commented Onur Ã-ymen of the
centre-left Republican People’s Party, the main opposition, calling
for "an end to political assassinations" in this country.

"This is extremely serious," said Mehmet Dulger, chairman of the
parliament’s foreign affairs committee. "Political killings should be
a thing of the past — we should forget about this sort of thing."

"This tragedy will have very harmful effects on Turkey," said
journalist Cengiz Candar, saying the murder was "obviously
pre-meditated and well-planned."

Another journalist, Derya Sazak, called for a mass mobilization to
protest against what he called "no doubt … a political
assassination, which must not remain unsolved."

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed swift action and promised
the perpetrators would quickly be brought to justice, but most of
Dink’s friends remained skeptical, his lawyer Erdal Dogan saying: "I
strongly doubt the killer will ever be found."

Turkey has been plagued since the 1970s by a series of murders of
prominent politicians, journalists and academics, often under similar
circumstances; in most cases, their killers were never found.

One exception was the popular liberal newspaper editor Abdi Ipekci,
gunned down near his Istanbul home in 1979 by Mehmet Ali Agca, an
ultra-right wing hit-man who gained international prominence when he
tried to kill the late pope John Paul II in 1981.

Ugur Mumcu, a popular author, investigative reporter and staunch
defender of Turkey’s secular system, died in 1993 when a bomb placed
in his car exploded as he turned the ignition in front of his
residential Ankara home.

Hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets of the capital for
his funeral, and the turnout was matched in 1999 for Ahmet Taner
Kislali.

The former culture minister, academic, newspaper columnist and
fervent secularist died when a booby-trapped package left on the
bonnet of his car exploded as he tried to brush it off outside his
suburban Ankara home.

Professor Bahriye �çok, a secularist and one of very few women to
become a theology professor in Turkey, was killed by a package bomb
delivered to her home in 1990.

Another prominent secularist academic, law professor Muammer Aksoy,
had been gunned down in front of his house in Ankara just eight
months earlier.

The 1970s too were rife in killings of right- and left-wing
personalities as militants of rival political camps dragged Turkey
into near civil war; the main reason the army cited to justify its
September 1980 coup, just nine years after Turkey’s previous military
putsch.

The latest headline-grabbing political killing occurred only last
year, when an Islamist lawyer sprayed gunfire at a meeting of
magistrates at the Council of State, Turkey’s top administrative
court, killing one judge and wounding several others.

The gunman, who said he was protesting against a court ruling to
maintain a ban on women wearing Islamic headscarves in government
offices, was immediately arrested. His trial continues.