Middle East Online
Jan 19 2015

Thousands call for justice over murder of journalist Hrant Dink

Holding signs in Turkish, Armenian and English reading ‘Justice for
Hrant’, thousands rally around offices of Agos newspaper in Istanbul.
Middle East Online

By Stuart Williams – ISTANBUL

Thousands of people marched through central Istanbul on Monday calling
for justice over the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink
who was shot dead in broad daylight eight years ago.

Holding signs in Turkish, Armenian and English reading “Justice for
Hrant”, they rallied around the offices of the Agos newspaper, a
bilingual Turkish and Armenian weekly, which he edited.

The memorial rally — an annual event but considerably larger than in
previous years — coincided with the arrest by the Turkish authorities
of a senior police officer accused of failing to prevent the killing.

Dink, 52, was shot dead with two bullets to the head in broad daylight
outside the offices of Agos on January 19, 2007 in Turkey’s most
notorious murder of recent times.

Ogun Samast, then a 17-year-old jobless high-school dropout, confessed
to the murder and was sentenced to almost 23 years in jail in 2011.

But the murder grew into a wider scandal after it emerged that the
security forces knew of a plot to kill Dink, but failed to act.

A court on Monday remanded in custody Ercan Demir, who was police
intelligence chief of the Black Sea Trabzon region where the gunman
and his suspected accomplices came from.

He is accused of failing to act on intelligence that could have
prevented the murder.

Demir had been controversially named police chief of the southeastern
Sirnak province but an arrest warrant was issued for him last week and
he turned himself into the police in Ankara.

Turkey had on Tuesday arrested two other lower ranking policeman on
charges of negligence for failing to prevent the murder.

Dink, a major figure in Turkey’s tiny but prominent Armenian
community, has long pushed for a reconciliation between Turks and
Armenians after decades of bitterness.

Armenians accuse Ottoman forces during World War I of carrying out a
genocide against their forebears that left an estimated 1.5 million
people dead. But modern Turkey has always vehemently resisted terming
the mass killings as genocide.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the tragedy and the date
appeared to give the Dink memorial march additional impetus.

Some held banners referring to the events such as “become conscious of
the genocide along with Hrant Dink”. Others held cards reading: “We
are all Hrant Dink, we are all Armenians.”

Less than 10 percent of Turks believe their government should
recognise the mass killings of Armenians in World War I as genocide,
according to a survey published on Tuesday.

Supporters of Dink’s family have long feared that those behind the
murder were protected by the state and have asked for a deeper
investigation.