DINK MURDER ONCE AGAIN BRINGS TO SURFACE GENDARMERIE, POLICE CONFLICT…
Lale Sariibrahimoglu

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Feb 8 2007

Turkey’s gendarmerie forces and the police, which are both supposed
to be taking orders from the Interior Ministry, have once again
displayed their internal conflict, this time following the slaying
of the prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in early
January. Recent publication by the Turkish media of photographs and
video of police and a gendarmerie officer posing with Ogun Samast,
the alleged killer of Hrant Dink, treating him as if he were a hero,
has not only shown us again the existing problem of ultranationalism
within the two security organizations supposed to defend the country
from internal threats and also an ongoing conflict among both forces,
causing weaknesses in the internal security operations.

The photographs show the suspect in the killing, 17-year-old Samast,
holding out a Turkish flag and posing with officers, some of them in
uniform. Behind Samast a poster with another Turkish flag carries
the words of Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey: "The nation’s land
is sacred. It cannot be left to fate." A voice in the video can be
heard asking if the quote on the poster can be arranged above the
suspect’s head.

Then came also reports carried by some Turkish dailies that not only
a police informant but also some gendarmerie officers were tipped
off before Dink’s murder that he might be killed. But unfortunately
he still was killed.

Since we can’t bring back Dink, the duty of the Turkish state now is
not only to bring to justice those responsible behind Dink’s murder,
but also to rapidly put into force existing reforms that would enable
both the police and the gendarmerie forces to effectively cooperate
and share intelligence information, instead of sometimes seeing each
other as adversaries.

The only way to ensure a close cooperation among these two security
organizations is to put the Gendarmerie General Command (JGK) under
the real control of the Interior Ministry, which would take orders
from this civilian ministry instead of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK)
during peacetime.

In theory, the JGK operates under the Ministry of Interior during
peacetime, who is in charge of domestic security and public order,
while affiliated to the TSK during times of war. But in practice, the
JGK operates under the directives of the TSK during peace time, too.

Their budgets are under TSK control while their hierarchical structures
are supervised by the military. The JGK members also take orders from
the TSK while fulfilling their internal security duties, bypassing
governors and heads of districts assigned by the Interior Ministry.

Even in the treatment of the police officers and the gendarmerie
personnel, some of which were posing with Samast, the ultranationalist
alleged killer of Dink, we witnessed discrimination in their
treatment. For example, police officers responsible for the photo
scandal and mismanagement in Dink’s murder were removed from their
current posts while the TSK has assigned those responsible gendarmerie
officers to different cities of the country, instead of removing them
from their posts.

Whereas if both members of the security organizations were affiliated
to the Interior Ministry in any real sense, they would have both
been subjected to the same treatment. We should bear in mind that
this discriminatory attitude does hurt, among other things, the
public conscience.

The lack of the civilian democratic oversight of the JGK and the
existence of the ultranationalist police and gendarmerie officers
within the two organizations as witnessed during which some of them
were posing with Samast furthers weaknesses in the protection of
the country.

Thus this situation underlines the urgency of taking steps to bring
the JGK under government control too while launching programs to
train both police and the gendarmerie forces to act together and to
refrain from ultranationalist attitudes.