Fury after police pictured posing with Dink murder suspect

· Turkish papers criticise hero treatment of teenager
· Dead journalist’s genocide claims upset nationalists

Agencies in Ankara
Saturday February 3, 2007
The Guardian

Outrage at the murder of the Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink
deepened yesterday after the media showed images of the teenage murder
suspect posing with the Turkish flag and security officials after his
arrest. The government launched an inquiry into the footage, which
newspapers denounced as "hero treatment" of the 17-year-old suspect.

Ogun Samast confessed to the January 19 killing of Dink, a 52-year-old
journalist who had angered Turkish nationalists with assertions that
the mass killings of Armenians around the time of the first world war
amounted to genocide.

The images showed Mr Samast holding a Turkish flag and posing with
officers, some in uniform, shortly after his arrest on January
21. Behind him a poster carries the words of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,
the founder of modern Turkey: "The nation’s land is sacred. It cannot
be left to fate." The Turkish media was outraged. "Shoulder to
shoulder with the triggerman: suspected killer Samast was given the
hero treatment," the Sabah daily reported on its front page.

Ismet Berkan, the editor-in-chief of liberal newspaper Radikal, said
the release of the video images was like killing Dink a second time
and showed nationalism in Turkey was on the rise.

Later Friday, the state-owned Anatolia news agency reported that four
police officers in Samsun, where the photographs were taken, had been
dismissed and four military police had been moved to other
assignments.

It was not clear whether the eight officers were the ones who posed
with Mr Samast.

Initial reports said the photographs were taken in a military police
office at the bus station where Mr Samast was captured, but military
police said they were taken at a police station nearby. A statement
urged the media to be cautious in publicising "attempts aimed at
fraying the Turkish armed forces" and expressed concern about the
motives of those who leaked the images.

"We in the police will do everything necessary," national police
spokesman Ismail Caliskan promised at a news conference. "Whoever is
responsible will be given the appropriate punishment."