DINK FAMILY WINS REPARATIONS FROM TRT FOR INSULTING DINK

Hurriyet
March 2 2010
Turkey

Turkey’s state broadcaster has been ordered to pay reparations to slain
journalist Hrant Dink’s family for a documentary it broadcast that
implied he was a perpetrator in a 1978 massacre in southern Turkey.

"Å~^ahların Labirenti" (The Labyrinth of the Shahs) was a Turkish
Radio and Television Corporation, or TRT, documentary that originally
aired in December 2008 and investigated the KahramanmaraÅ~_ massacre
of 1978, in which more than 100 people died in clashes between local
Alevis and Sunnis.

Turkey’s infamous "deep state" was later alleged to have played a
role in organizing the clashes.

OkkeÅ~_ Å~^endiller, who was one of the suspects in the massacre before
becoming a KahramanmaraÅ~_ deputy, alleged in the documentary that Dink
was one of the perpetrators of the killings. The film showed Dink’s
photograph while Å~^endiller said Dink and the leftist organizations
he founded with his friends initiated the incident.

Dink’s family opened a case against TRT, Å~^endiller and production
company Bey Yapım, alleging Dink had been insulted.

As a result of the case concluded last week, all suspects have been
ordered to pay 20,000 Turkish Liras in reparations.

"Hrant had dedicated his life to brotherhood and the friendship of
people, it was unacceptable that he would be considered responsible
for such a massacre," said Dink family lawyer Fethiye Cetin. "Those
allegations have caused the family so much suffering."

The family was expected to donate the reparations to a foundation,
as they have done in the past for other similar cases in which the
family opened cases for insults against Dink.

Dink was a prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist and the editor in
chief of the multi-lingual weekly Agos. In January 2007, he was shot
and killed in front of his newspaper’s office in Istanbul’s central
Å~^iÅ~_li district.

The confessed murder suspect, Ogun Samast, was arrested within a couple
of days. Dink’s family alleges that police intelligence officers failed
to act on many pieces of intelligence that nationalist circles were
planning to kill Dink long before the actual murder.

Although there have been official inspection reports detailing police
and military negligence prior to the murder, the officials allegedly
responsible have not yet been brought to justice.

With the journalist’s murder case ongoing, Cetin said threats against
Agos were continuing but added that authorities were increasingly
taking their complaints into consideration.