TURKISH OFFICIALS SACKED IN PROBE INTO KILLER VIDEO

Gulf Times, Qatar
Feb 6 2007

ANKARA: Two Turkish security officials lost their jobs yesterday in
a widening investigation into video footage that appeared to portray
as a hero the teenage killer of a prominent Turkish-Armenian editor.

The state-run Anatolian news agency said authorities in the Black Sea
city of Samsun had sacked a fifth policeman and transferred a fifth
member of the paramilitary gendarmerie to other duties following
similar dismissals last Friday.

The news agency said that the dismissals were made at the request of
a government inspector but gave no further information.

The video footage showed Ogun Samast, 17, posing in front of a Turkish
flag with security officials shortly after his arrest last month
on suspicion of killing the editor Hrant Dink outside his newspaper
office in Istanbul. He has confessed to the crime.

Dink’s funeral drew 100,000 mourners onto the streets in protest at
the militant nationalism that apparently inspired his killer. Seven
others have also been charged in the Dink case.

Dink had infuriated Turkish nationalists by urging Turkey in his
writings to face up to its responsibility for the mass killing of
Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915.

The video footage has revived fears in Turkey of a shadowy "deep state"
working in collusion with criminal gangs.

The "deep state" is code for hardline nationalists purportedly based
in the security forces who are ready to break the law if need be in
defence of their ideology.

Last week, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, under pressure in an
election year for failing to combat crime, vowed to tackle what he
called "gangs within state institutions".