Reporters Sans Frontieres (France)
press release
Oct 14 2009
Doubts remain after Turkish-Armenian editor murder trial latest hearing –
RSF
Text of report in English by Paris-based media freedom organization
Reporters Sans Frontieres on 14 October
Essential issues were again left unaddressed at the 11th hearing on 12
October in the trial of the newspaper editor Hrant Dink’s alleged killers
before an Istanbul court. A Turkish journalist of Armenian origin, Dink was
gunned down outside his newspaper in Istanbul on 19 January 2007.
"In hearing after hearing, the same fundamental questions remain, including
the existence of a political will at the highest level to expose the truth
in a case whose ramifications could turn it into a major government
scandal," Reporters Without Borders said. "But one thing is now clearly
established, namely the danger that the ultranationalist discourse and
ideology of hate pose to Turkish society in its entirety. This danger has
clearly not gone away."
The press freedom organization added: "This is also evidenced by the fact
that in the past four years, some 200 Turkish intellectuals, journalists,
publishers and dissidents have been tried under criminal code article 301 on
charges of humiliating Turkish identity or insulting state institutions,
meaning the army, police and judicial system."
For the first time since the start of the trial in July 2007, the alleged
murder weapon was displayed in court. Judge Erkan Canak showed it to the
defendants. Two of them, Ogun Samast, the youth who has confessed to
shooting Dink, and Yasin Hayal, who allegedly supplied him with the gun,
said they recognized it.
During the hearing, lawyers representing the Dink family reiterated their
concern about the murkier aspects of the case. They asked for the case to be
linked to two other ongoing investigations and said evidence from these two
other investigations should be shared with the Dink trial. One is the
investigation into the ultranationalist conspiracy known as Ergenekon, and
the other is the investigation into the 2007 murder of three Protestant
missionaries in the eastern city of Malatya.
One of the Dink family lawyers, Fethiye Cetin, asked for the court to be
given the testimony of one of the Ergenekon defendants, Sevgi Erenerol, a
young woman who is the spokesperson of the (ultranationalist) Turkish
Orthodox Church. Erenerol, who supported the Article 301 prosecutions
brought against Dink, mentioned meetings with senior armed forces personnel
at which the presence of Protestant missionaries in Turkey was referred to
as a "danger."
The prosecutors in charge of the Ergenekon case are already supposed to
provide Judge Canak with documents concerning another of the defendants,
Durmus Ali Ozoglu, whose statements tend to confirm the existence of a plan
to "psychologically destabilise" Turkey.
It is for investigating the Ergenekon conspiracy and the failure of the
security forces to prevent Dink’s murder that Nedim Sener, a journalist with
the daily Milliyet, is being prosecuted over an article published in
February and a book entitled "The Dink murder and Intelligence Agency Lies."
He is facing a possible 32-year jail sentence (more than the 20-year terms
that Dink’s alleged murderers could get) on charges of publishing
confidential information, trying to pervert the course of justice, insulting
a police officer and three senior intelligence officers and exposing the
intelligence officers to "attacks by terrorist organizations."
The Dink family lawyers also insisted during this hearing on the need to
continue efforts to identify all the people involved in the Dink murder. In
particular, they called for an investigation into the statements made to a
special parliamentary commission by the current head of intelligence in
Ankara, Ramazan Akyurek, who used to be police chief in Trabzon, the city
where most of the defendants come from. Akyurek told the commission he had
been aware of a plan to kill Dink.
During this hearing, the US software and internet company Microsoft was
asked to provide the court with transcripts of the MSN Messenger
conversations of one of the defendants, Erhan Tuncel, who was a Trabzon
police informer.
Several international observers attended the hearing, including Vincent
Niore, Alexandre Couyoumdjian and Mathieu Brochier, three Paris Bar
Association lawyers who are following the trial at the behest of Bar
President Christian Charriere-Bournazel. It was the third consecutive
hearing they have attended. They said their Paris Bar Association mandate to
observe the trial and support the Dink family and its lawyers has been
extended until 2011.
In response to a journalist’s question, they said they have not been
received by the head of the Istanbul Bar Association, Muammer Aydin, who has
said in the past that he is not happy with the interest the Paris Bar
Association is taking in the trial as it "means that too much importance is
being attached to Hrant Dink’s Armenian identity."
The observers also included European Parliament member Helene Flautre, who
is joint chairperson of the Turkey-EU mixed commission, Ali Yurttagul, an
adviser to the European Greens, Eugene Schoulgin, international secretary of
International PEN, and two representatives of Norwegian PEN, Lin Stensrud
and Trine Kleven.