TURKISH CITY GRAPPLES WITH NATIONALIST VIOLENCE AFTER MURDERS
by Nicolas Cheviron
Agence France Presse — English
February 8, 2007 Thursday 11:16 AM GMT
The Black Sea port of Trabzon is searching its historic soul after
after two murders blamed on ultra-nationalists, that have rattled
Turkey and raised political tensions.
A 16-year-old boy was jailed last year for shooting an Italian priest
as he knelt in prayer in the city’s Santa Maria Catholic Church. The
murder was widely linked to the publication of cartoons of the Prophet
Mohammed in Europe.
The January 19 killing of ethnic-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink,
whose alleged 17-year-old assailant and seven accomplices all come
from Trabzon has heightened anxieties.
On top of the murders there was the bombing in 2004 of a McDonald’s
restaurant and the near lynching of five leftist activists mistaken
for Kurdish militants.
The city’s lively commercial streets and stone buildings are reminders
of the past glories of what was once Trebizond, a booming Silk Road
trading city, far from any thoughts of nationalist-fuelled violence.
With a sizeable university, an ever-popular football club and a flow of
tourists from Russia and Caucasus countries, the city of 300,000 people
displays no signs to brand it a place isolated in misery and ignorance.
Pelitli is an impoverished suburb where Dink’s alleged murderer, Ogun
Samast, a jobless high-school dropout, met with friends in Internet
cafes to discuss what they saw as rising threats to Turkey’s unity.
Mayor Omer Kayikci was at pains to explain what drove the youths
to violence.
"Of course, there is unemployment, but this has never before caused
trouble in the streets or led to the formation of gangs," he said.
Some intellectuals and officials who gathered here last week to discuss
why Trabzon is producing violence suggested that the city reflected
rising nationalism across Turkey, fuelled by what is perceived as
humiliations by the European Union and US designs to subdue the
Muslim world.
Dink was hated by nationalists for branding as genocide the mass
killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire. It is one of the
most controversial episodes in Turkish history and the EU has urged
an open debate.
Suleyman Gunduz, an MP from the ruling Justice and Development Party,
drew attention to the fact that Trabzon was the city that lost the
largest number of soldiers to a two-decade Kurdish insurgency in
the southeast.
Local people, he added, are also wary of a possible campaign to revive
what was the ancient Greek Kingdom of Pontus in their region.
The violence can also be blamed on mafia-style groups involved in
drug-trafficking and prostitution in the city who "are hiding behind
the banner of nationalism," lawyer Omer Faruk Altuntas said.
But human rights activist Gultekin Yucesan said the real problem lies
with "gangs within the state who are responsible for Dink’s murder."
The "deep state" is a term used to describe members of the
establishment, mostly the security forces, who are prepared to act
outside the law to eliminate what they see as threats to Turkey’s
unity.
Dink’s killing gave ammunition to those who believe the "deep state"
exists, after a video emerged showing policemen posing for pictures
with the assailant after his capture in the northern city of Samsun.
The media said the pictures were a show of support for the murder.
The Istanbul’s intelligence chief was dismissed Monday following
accusations that the police failed to follow up on a tip-off last
year about a plot to kill Dink being organised in Trabzon.
In the Santa Maria Church, the members of a small Roman Catholic
congregation that held a memorial service Monday for the slain priest,
Father Andrea Santoro, were reluctant to join the debate.
Underscoring their sense of anxiety, a worshipper pointed at the tall
walls surrounding the 19th-century building: "This is not a church,
it is a fortress," he said. "People are tough here."