CETIN EMEC’S WIDOW REGRETS ACCUSING ISLAMISTS, NOT STATE, OF HUSBAND’S MURDER

Today’s Zaman
Feb 16 2010
Turkey

The wife of journalist Cetin Emec, who was murdered in 1990, has
stated that she regrets assuming her husband was killed by Islamists,
in the wake of new evidence linking many unsolved murders of the
1990s to clandestine deep-state groups.

"Light has not yet been shed on the forces behind these [unsolved
murders] yet. We said the assailants were Islamists since he [Cetin
Emec] had been receiving threats about his opinions on religion. We
said ‘Iran,’ we said Islamists. I am an Ataturkist [derived from
founder of the Turkish Republic Mustafa Kemal Ataturk], patriotic,
pro-military woman. I have never been angry with my state. I did
not want to confront other realities. So, accusing Iran suited my
worldview. I wanted to believe that Iran did it," Bilge Emec, Cetin
Emec’s widow, told the Vatan daily on Sunday.

On March 7, 1990, Emec, the editor-in-chief of the Hurriyet daily,
was murdered in front of his house. Although 20 years have passed
since the assassination, the masterminds behind it have yet to
be brought to justice. Like many unsolved political murders of the
’90s, the Emec murder was originally thought to have been committed by
Islamists, but recent investigations such as the one into Ergenekon —
a clandestine terrorist organization charged with plotting to overthrow
the government — have shown that the hand of the deep state appears
to have been involved in these killings.

Bilge Emec, who has rarely spoken to the media since her husband’s
death, said that although the gunman was captured, those who ordered
and planned the murder remain a mystery, claiming that it appeared
as though there was a cover-up.

Recently, family members of individuals who were assassinated for
political reasons have been voicing demands that the perpetrators
and real masterminds behind the killings to be brought to justice
in Turkey. Relatives of a number of victims of unsolved, suspicious
murders attended last week’s hearing in the trial of suspects in the
murder of Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian journalist fatally shot by
an ultranationalist teenager outside the Agos weekly in 2007.