DINK’S FAMILY FILES COMPLAINT IN COURT
ASBAREZ
2/14/2007
ISTANBUL (Combined Sources)–Slain journalist Hrant Dink’s widow
Rachel, his three children and his brother Orhan filed a complaint
in municipal court against those officials who were informed of the
death threats against his life but did not act to prevent his murder.
In the complaint, the family insisted that authorities had failed to
protect the journalist’s life and sought unspecified damages.
They have also identified Erhan Tuncel, one of the suspects arrested
in the case. He was later discovered to be a police informant, but
has remained silent since the Jan. 19 murder.
A man suspected of having sent an e-mail death threat to the Agos
weekly newspaper offices was held briefly by the police in the central
town of Kayseri Monday, Turkish news agencies reported.
The police captured an individual who allegedly sent electronic
messages to the bilingual Agos daily. It was not immediately clear
whether his messages were sent before or after Dink’s killing. The man,
whose name was not identified, was released after being questioned
by police, authorities said.
The personal computer belonging to the alleged culprit was seized by
the police for further investigation.
"The suspect’s testimony was relayed to the Prosecutor’s Office
because this is a very sensitive issue in Kayseri, where we have
an Armenian church. We don’t want to allow anything bad to happen,"
the city’s police chief, Orhan Ozdemir, told the Dogan News Agency.
In other news, speculation has been rife here that Orhan Pamuk, the
winner of the 2006 Nobel Literature Prize, has fled the country over
security concerns ever since he left for New York last month to teach
at Columbia University, where he is a fellow. Pamuk has chosen to
remain silent over his departure which came two weeks after Dink was
gunned down outside the offices of his weekly newspaper in Istanbul
by a 17-year-old suspected nationalist.
The novelist’s close friends and publishers in Turkey deny claims that
he has fled or gone into a temporary exile after receiving threats,
similar to those sent to Dink before his killing. "He did not escape
from Turkey, there was nothing extraordinary in his departure and he
will be back," a close colleague said on condition of anonymity.
The case was dropped on a technicality but turned Pamuk into a
"traitor" for ultra-nationalists. One of the eight men charged over
Dink’s murder warned Pamuk to watch out and "come to his senses" while
he was being brought to court last month. Pamuk is among more than
a dozen intellectuals and journalists who were assigned bodyguards
not long after Dink’s murder.
Another one is Baskin Oran, a professor of political sciences and
author of a controversial government-sponsored report in 2004 which
made radical recommendations to the government to improve the rights
of the restive Kurdish community and non-Muslim minorities. The report
was branded treasonous by nationalists, disowned by the government
and led to Oran facing charges of insulting the Turkish judiciary of
which he was acquitted.
Oran, who has been receiving threats since then, wrote in a recent
newspaper column that there was a "culture of lynching" in Turkey and
argued that the state had to protect its citizens without waiting for
them to request protection. "Did I ask for protection? No. I do not
demand it, it is the state’s principal duty," said the academician
who recently filed a complaint over the threats he received.
"The prosecutor summoned me and asked whether it would be possible
for me to reconcile with those who threaten me. I said no," he wrote.
Erol Onderoglu, the representative in Istanbul of media rights
watchdog Reporters Without Borders, said that police, already under
fire for their handling of the Dink case, finally assigned protection
to intellectuals so as not to face any more embarrassment. Turkish
newspapers have accused police of receiving intelligence last year of
a plot to kill Dink, but failing to act on it, while a video leaked
to the media two weeks ago showed security forces posing with Dink’s
alleged assailant for "souvenir pictures" shortly after his capture.
"When police are able to put thousands of officers on duty at football
matches, could they not also assign bodyguards to these intellectuals,"
said Onderoglu, who described the threats against intellectuals not
as isolated acts but an organized campaign.
Since Dink’s killing, a group of 10 non-governmental organizations
have presented a proposal to amend the penal code article — under
which Dink was convicted — in order to limit its scope and boost
freedom of expression.
Facing both presidential and general elections this year amid a rising
wave of nationalism, the government has yet to give its view on the
proposal to change the article.