ARTICLE 301, AGAIN!
Hurriyet
Nov 18 2008
Turkey
Is there anyone in Turkey who can say with absolute confidence
that Hrant Dink, editor of the Armenian-Turkish Agos weekly, was
not a victim of premeditated murder, committed despite police and
gendarmerie intelligence being tipped off about the preparations for
it, as early as a year before the heinous assassination was carried
out, allegedly by a young hit man, 17-year-old Ogun Samast?
Or, is there anyone with brains in Turkey who does not believe the
Jan. 19, 2007 Dink murder could have been prevented, if police and
gendarmerie intelligence worked properly and the Istanbul Governor’s
Office provided adequate security to our colleague, rather than
summoning him to a meeting with a deputy governor who warned him that
he should behave well?
Or, particularly, after all we have heard and read about the Dink
trial, revelations of the alleged hit-man, confessions of victims
of the intelligence fiasco, the inability to bring charges against
police and military officers who apparently, at least, neglected their
duty, can we say with confidence there is definitely not "official
involvement" in the Dink murder and nothing to make the Turkish state
responsible for the tragedy?
Is it not obvious to many of us who have following the Dink murder
trial, why the prosecution have failed, so far, to go further than
the hit man and bring to justice the culprits within the state who
masterminded this heinous crime, is it a demonstration of the fact
there is at least one gang within the state that is still untouchable?
An interesting interview Our journalist colleague Okan Muderrisoglu
reported Monday on an interview with Justice Minister Mehmet Ali
Å~^ahin. The minister was quoted as saying, over the last six months
prosecutors have filed 381 applications seeking ministerial approval
to launch court cases under the contentious Article 301 of the Penal
Code, which regulates penalties for insulting the Turkish state and
state organs. Out of these 381 applications, the minister said he
approved court cases to be opened in "only 47" of them, including
that of writer Temel Demirer.
Demirer is now risking up to five years imprisonment on grounds he
"insulted and degraded" the Turkish state, when after the 2007 murder
of Dink he said, "There is a genocide in our history. Its name is the
Armenian genocide. Hrant explained this reality to all of us at the
cost of his life and blood. I am now committing a crime and calling
everyone to commit a crime. Those who do not commit a crime against
this murderer-state are accomplices in the Dink murder. We have to
commit this crime so what happened to our Armenian brothers yesterday,
should not happen to our Kurdish brothers todayÃ~I"
Intellectual responsibility What Demirer said, immediately after the
country lived through the psychological trauma of the murder of Dink,
was unfortunately rather strong. But, he was revolting against the
untimely loss of a prominent member of our nation, in a cold-blooded
murder, just because he did not subscribe to some nationalist myth or
to an official version of history, which even today cannot concede the
tragedies and the immense sufferings the Anatolian population of all
ethnic backgrounds were subjected to during the dissolution years of
the Ottoman Empire. Minister Å~^ahin said no one can call the Turkish
state a "murderer" and as the Justice Minister, he would not allow
it because insulting the Turkish state by calling it a "murderer"
cannot be an exercise of freedom of speech.
What the minister said, indeed was not much different to what his
predecessor, Cemil Cicek, once told me as to why Turkey would not
scrap the contentious article all together and instead made cosmetic
changes to its text. "We cannot let people insult Turkey and get away
with it!" he said.
In democracies, people and the state must be accustomed to, even very
harsh, criticism and no one can be obliged to subscribe to a general
perception or the official version of anything. Yes, the state cannot
and should not be accused of being a murderer, but the state should
also be able to bring to justice those elements within the state who
have entrusted themselves with the duty and power of defending the
state the way they like against what they themselves perceive as a
threat to the state or to national security.
–Boundary_(ID_ilii0MjHl+T9tKM9WhZM1w)- –