Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Germany
January 20, 2007 Saturday 11:51 PM EST
5TH ROUNDUP: Turkish police arrest key suspect in journalist murder
DPA x Turkey Crime 5TH ROUNDUP: Turkish police arrest key suspect in
journalist murder Adds Erdogan comments, suspect details; epa photos
available Istanbul
The prime suspect in the murder of prominent
Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was arrested Saturday night,
Istanbul’s governor confirmed.
Police arrested the suspect, a teenager, on a bus in Samsun on the
coast of the Black Sea, Provincial Governor Muammer Guler said, only
hours after police said they had identified the man with reported
help from the boy’s father.
Dink, 52, was shot dead on Friday outside the offices of the Agos
newspaper he published, and for which he had written controversial
articles on Turkish-Armenian relations that angered nationalists and
saw him sentenced to six months probation last year under Turkey’s
controversial law of "insulting Turkishness."
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan congratulated security
authorities on the arrest "in the name of the … country, in the
name of the fight for democracy and freedom," he said at a party
convention near Ankara.
Governor Guler said the 16 or 17-year-old suspect had been on his
way to his home city of Trabzon, also on the Black Sea coast, when he
was arrested, and would now be flown to Istanbul to face charges. A
number of arrests have already been made in the Trabzon area.
Earlier Saturday, Guler released photos and video footage of the
then unidentified suspect – a young man wearing a denim jacket, white
cap and goatee beard who was filmed on security cameras before and
after the killing.
One photo shows the man putting a weapon into his belt as he runs
away from the scene of the killing.
Gulan confirmed that six further arrests had been made Saturday in
connection with the murder, and said those suspects would also be
flown to Istanbul to stand trial.
The security authorities have been criticized for not doing enough
to protect Dink, who had received death threats over comments he had
made in his newspaper on Turkish-Armenian relations.
Guler rejected the criticism Saturday, saying that Dink had not
requested any police protection. He was given some protection on the
days he appeared had appeared in court, Guler added.
Thousands of people took to the streets in Istanbul Friday
evening protesting the murder under the slogan "We are all Hrant
Dink."
On Saturday, there were still many people outside the front door
of Dink’s Agos newspaper. Flowers and pictures of Dink had been left
at the offices.
In his last article written for Agos, Dink said he had received
many death threats from Turkish nationalists over his comments on
Turkish-Armenian relations and was living under a kind of
psychological torture.
Dink’s lawyer said Saturday that he had been receiving threats for
two and a half years.
Around 70,000 ethnic-Armenians live in Turkey, most in Istanbul.
Armenian numbers were considerably higher, especially in eastern
Anatolia until World War I when the local Armenian population sided
with invading Russian forces.
The Ottoman government ordered the deportation of Armenians living
in the east during which hundreds of thousands of people died.
Armenian historians claim that as many as 1.5 million Christian
Armenians were killed in the deportations and in massacres and that
the actions were a clear genocide, a view that Dink also espoused in
his articles.
Turkey admits that there were massacres of Armenians during the
deportations, but vehemently denies that the killings constituted a
genocide.
Turks living in other parts of Europe also criticized the inaction
of the Turkish authorities.
"As recently as January 10, Dink received threatening letters that
he gave to the state prosecutor, but they did nothing," said Frank
Sen, director of the Centre for Turkish Studies in the German city of
Essen, in an interview with Focus magazine.
It was a disgrace "that the Turkish police hadn’t protected him,"
Sen said.
Politicians in Germany and across Europe have condemned Dink’s
killing and have renewed calls for Ankara to strike Article 301 on
"insulting Turkishness" from the statute books.
Many Turkish journalists and writers have been charged under the
article, including Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk and female author Elif
Shafak.
Turkish nationalists used the court proceedings to threaten and
browbeat the accused.
Dink was due to be buried in the Armenian cemetery in Istanbul on
Tuesday.