Agence France Presse
Oct 16 2009

Turkish police chief demoted over journalist killing: report

ANKARA, Oct 16 2009

The head of the Turkish police intelligence department, under
investigation over the 2007 killing of Turkish-Armenian journalist
Hrant Dink, has been removed from office, media reports said Friday.

Ramazan Akyurek was demoted to a lower post in a different department
to ensure an objective investigation over his alleged misconduct in
handling prior intelligence of the murder, they said.

In a report prepared last year on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan’s orders, Akyurek was accused of failing to act on tip-offs on
plans to kill Dink that police received a year before the murder.

Akyurek was at the time police chief in the Black Sea city of Trabzon
from where the self-confessed killer of Dink and most of his
accomplices hail from.

The report also accused Akyurek of abuse of office for failing to
provide Dink with bodyguards during his term as the head of police
intelligence even though the journalist was clearly a possible target,
and called for disciplinary action.

Lawyers for Dink’s family have accused the security forces of
withholding and destroying evidence to cover up the killing.

One of them, Fethiye Cetin, hailed Akyurek’s demotion Friday, but said
that "this step was taken too late."

Dink, 52, hated by Turkish nationalists for calling the World War I
massacres of Armenians a genocide, was gunned down on January 19,
2007, outside the offices of his Agos newspaper in central Istanbul.

The gunman and 19 suspected accomplices went on trial in Istanbul in 2007.