DINK FAMILY WINS REPARATIONS FROM TRT FOR INSULTING THE MURDERED JOURNALIST

ArmInfo
2010-03-03 20:14:00

ArmInfo. 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.

Hurriyet Daily News reports that "Sahlar?n 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 Kahramanmaras 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. Okkes Sendiller, who was one of the suspects in the massacre
before becoming a Kahramanmaras deputy, alleged in the documentary
that Dink was one of the perpetrators of the killings. The film
showed Dink’s photograph while Sendiller said Dink and the leftist
organizations he founded with his friends initiated the incident.

Dink’s family opened a case against TRT, Sendiller and production
company Bey Yap?m, 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.

To recall, 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 Sisli 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.