Ankara removes police chief in Dink case
By Vincent Boland in Ankara

FT
January 27 2007 02:00

The governor and police chief of Turkey’s Black Sea province of
Trabzon were fired yesterday as an investigation into the murder of a
prominent journalist highlighted possible lapses and failures by the
security forces.

Political commentators said their removal – officially the two men
were "recalled to Ankara" – was an attempt by the authorities to show
how seriously they were treating the killing of Hrant Dink, a
Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor shot dead in Istanbul on January 19.

His murder led to a clamour for a thorough and transparent
investigation. Six people have been charged in connection with the
crime. They all come from in or around Trabzon, a sprawling,
down-at-heel city (and province) on the Black Sea in north-eastern
Turkey.

At least one of the suspects, an extreme nationalist with a criminal
record, was known to the police before Dink’s murder. This may have
been a factor in removing the two officials, who are responsible for
security in the city and the province.

The interior ministry was investigating "whether there was any failure
or negligence of the local administration and the provincial security
department", according to the Anatolia news agency.

The suspects include Ogun Samast, a 17-year-old who confessed to
killing Dink and has been charged with murder. He is said to have told
interrogators that he killed Dink because of the journalist’s
pro-Armenian stance in the debate on the mass killing of Ottoman
Armenians during the first world war.

Trabzon, which has a population of about 500,000, has been pinpointed
by the media as the centre of a rising phenomenon in Turkey – a fusion
of ultra-nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism that seems to hold a
particular appeal for disaffected young men.

As well as producing Mr Samast and the criminal gang said to have
incited him to kill, the city last spring was the site of the murder
of Andrea Santoro, an Italian Roman Catholic priest.

The killer in that casewas of similar age and circumstance to Mr
Samast.

Television stations have held anxious panel discussions in recent days
on why Trabzon should have become a focal point of
nationalist/Islamist extremism.

Experts blame the city’s isolation from metropolitan Turkey and the
fact that it seems to be disproportionately represented in the armed
forces fighting separatist terrorism.

They also point to its relatively high unemployment and lack of
opportunities for youngsters, many of whom move to Istanbul in search
of a better life.