The Eurasia Daily Monitor
December 5, 2007 — Volume 4, Issue 225

COURT EVIDENCE RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT INVOLVEMENT OF TURKISH OFFICIALS
IN KILLING OF CHRISTIANS

Evidence presented to the court during the trial of five youths
accused of killing three Christians in the southeastern town of
Malatya earlier this year have raised questions about the involvement
of state officials in the murder.

On April 18, the five are alleged to have tortured and brutally killed
three employees of Zirve Yayincilk, a Christian publishing house in
Malatya. Two of the victims were Turks and the other a German
national. The murders shocked Turkey, particularly as they came less
than three months after the January 19 killing in Istanbul of Hrant
Dink, the editor of Agos, a newspaper serving Turkey’s small
community of Armenian Christians.

Initially the Malatya murders were thought merely to have been the
work of a group of impoverished Islamist youths, several of whom were
staying in the same dormitory run by a local Islamic foundation. The
assumption was that, even if the five had not acted spontaneously, it
had been an emotional decision taken at relatively short notice.

Under the Turkish judicial system, the individual hearings of a case
are often spread over many months or years rather than being held on
consecutive days, as is common in the United States and Western
Europe. When the first hearing was held on November 23, the evidence
presented by the public prosecutor contained detailed records of what
were alleged to have been the victims’ missionary activities. This
outraged the lawyers representing their families, who accused the
state-appointed prosecutor of trying to present the defense with
grounds for citing mitigating circumstances by claiming that their
clients had been provoked (Radikal, Milliyet, NTV, November 24).

It has now emerged that, in the six months preceding the murders, four
of the suspects changed their telephones a total of 106 times,
suggesting a concerted attempt to avoid surveillance. The cost of
changing telephones so frequently has also raised the question of
whether they were receiving financial support. Perhaps more
alarmingly, the records of the telephones used by the accused showed
that those with whom they had been in regular contact included a local
council member from the ultranationalist Nationalist Action Party
(MHP), someone in the Ankara headquarters of the Special Police Unit,
a public prosecutor, and a member of the military (Milliyet, Radikal,
Vatan, NTV, CNN-Turk, November 4).

There is nothing to suggest that the institutions themselves were
involved in the murders. However, the latest revelations have
disturbing parallels with the trial of those suspected of killing
Hrant Dink and have raised questions about the prevalence of racist
and religious prejudices among those responsible for maintaining law
and order. At the trial of Dink’s suspected murderer, it emerged
that, despite reporting numerous death threats, Dink had not been
offered police protection. More worryingly, telephone records
presented to the court suggested that some of those accused of
Dink’s murder had close links with elements in the police force in
their native city of Trabzon, on Turkey’s eastern Black Sea
coast. After the main suspect had been arrested, the Turkish media
published photographs taken by the detaining officers, showing him a
variety of heroic poses in front of the Turkish flag. Similarly,
after a 16 year-old was convicted of the February 2006 murder in
Trabzon of the Italian priest Andrea Santoro, his family received
photographs taken by detaining police showing their son proudly
displaying a Turkish flag (Milliyet, October 5).

On November 28, the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation
(TESEV) published the results of a survey of the attitudes of members
of the Turkish judiciary. A total of 51% of the judges and public
prosecutors questioned said that they regarded human rights, including
the freedom of expression, as a threat to national security and unity,
compared with only 28% who did not. Some 63% believed that the
European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) was prejudiced against Turkey
and 49% were opposed to the Turkish cases being taken to the court at
all. Perhaps more worryingly, 53% of judges said that they paid no
attention at all to any agreements signed by Turkey relating to basic
freedoms and rights (NTV, CNNTurk, November 28, Radikal, November 29).

The full details of the events leading up to Dink’s murder are
still not clear. The next hearing of the case involving the killings
in Malatya is currently scheduled for January 14, although the case is
not expected to be concluded until late summer or fall 2008 at the
earliest. The evidence against the accused, most of whom were arrested
at the scene of the crime, is so strong that few doubt that they will
be convicted. However, there has as yet been no attempt to investigate
some of the other questions raised by the case, not least what appears
to be a recurring pattern whereby those involved in high-profile
racist and religious hate crimes appear not only to have been in close
contact with state officials but have subsequently been feted as
heroes by members of the institutions responsible for enforcing law
and order in Turkey.

–Gareth Jenkins

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