Reporters without borders (press release), France
Jan 18 2008
On first anniversary of editor’s murder, authorities urged to
prosecute all those involved
On the eve of the first anniversary of the death of Hrant Dink,
Reporters Without Borders pays tribute to his courage and reiterates
its solidarity with his family and fellow journalists who defend his
memory. The editor of the Armenian- and Turkish-language weekly Agos,
Dink was gunned outside the newspaper’s office in Istanbul on 19
January 2007, in a murder that caused an outcry in Turkey and
throughout the world.
`The authorities must push ahead with the investigation in order to
identify all those, whoever they are, who were involved in this
terrible crime, one that had all the elements of a tragedy foretold,’
Reporters Without Borders said. `The authorities must show they are
capable of shouldering their share of the blame for this murder and
they must embark on a thorough overhaul of Turkey’s legislation and
the way the state apparatus operates.
`Amending or repealing article 301 of the criminal code, which
punishes `humiliating the Turkish identity,’ is an escapable part of
the reform process, and we encourage the authorities to do it as
quickly as possible.
`This is the only way to ensure that Dink is the last victim of
hatred in Turkey,’ Reporters Without Borders added. `Let us not
forget that about 100,000 people marched behind Dink’s coffin on 23
January 2007. Let us not forget that they chanted : `We are all Hrant
Dink, we are all Armenians’.’
The first one-day hearing in the trial of Dink’s alleged murderers
was held in the Istanbul suburb of Besikta on 2 July. The second was
held on 1 October and the next is to take place on 11 February. There
is no longer any doubt about the identify of the youth who fired the
shots, Ogün Samast, and his accomplices Erhan Tuncel and Yasin Hayal,
said to be the masterminds. The essential issue raised by the trial
is the involvement of the security forces in the murder, whether in
its gestation or execution or in support for the three leading
defendants afterwards.
The Dink family lawyers have on several occasions complained about
the destruction of evidence and the refusal of the authorities to go
after members of the police or gendarmerie. One of the most glaring
examples is a phone conversation between Tuncel and Mühittin Zenit, a
policeman based in the northeastern city of Trabzon, where most of
the 19 defendants are from. It took place half an hour after Dink’s
murder and shows that Zenit had been aware of a plan to kill Dink. He
has nonetheless been transferred to the Department of Intelligence.
Fethiye Cetin, one of the Dink family lawyers, also points out that
the video of the murder that was recorded by a surveillance camera
outside a bank located next to the newspaper was never viewed because
the police did not request the recording in time.
Interior minister Besir Atalay nonetheless told parliament this week
: `The justice system is functioning well in the Dink case. No
dimension of this event has remained outside its scope.’ Bahri Bayram
Belen, another of the Dink family lawyers, immediately responded :
`Unnecessary administrative decisions blocked judicial investigations
of state employees that should have been carried out.’ He added :
`Since the initial investigation, certain enquiries (…) have not
been appropriately conducted because the security forces did not
participate.’
Parliament is looking into the case. An investigative sub-commission
of the human rights commission began on 4 January to conduct
enquiries aimed at clarifying the circumstances in which the murder
took place. Headed by a former journalist, Mehmet Ocaktan, it has
already conducted investigations in Istanbul and Trabzon.
The irregularities have been confirmed by another parliamentary
commission of enquiry. Its report said : `Although interior minister
experts thought Directorate of Security officials in Istanbul, both
senior and junior, could be held responsible for failing in their
duty to supervise (before the murder), only one judicial
investigation into the head of the police intelligence service in
Istanbul, A. Ilhan Güler, was authorised.’
The prime minister’s office has meanwhile announced that it has
completed its own report after eight months of investigation. The
prime minister agreed to conduct this investigation in April after
getting a letter from Dink’s daughter, Rakel Dink, in which she
referred to the many irregularities and said she feared that justice
would never de done.
Another recent development is the emergence of the possibility that
Samast, the main defendant, could be older than his ID papers say.
Doctors who examined him in May concluded that he could be 18, not
17. The court must rule on this question, which could have a major
impact on the trial. If the court decides that Samast is not, after
all, a minor, the trial should be declared open to the public, while
Samast would face the possibility of life imprisonment instead of a
20-year sentence.
Dink was the victim of a state-endorsed nationalism that bans any
mention of certain aspects of Turkish history such as the genocide of
Armenians in the last years of the Ottoman empire. This nationalism
finds expression in article 301 of the criminal code, entitled
`Humiliation of Turkish identity, the republic and the institutions
or organs of the state,’ under which `openly humiliating the
government, the judicial organs of the state, or the military or
police structures’ is punishable for six months to three years in
prison.
Dink had been prosecuted under this article. His son, Arat Dink, was
give a suspended sentence of a year in prison on 11 October for
publishing in Agos the interview father had given to Reuters in which
he said the massacres of Armenians from 1915 to 1917 constituted
genocide. In all, 120 people have been prosecuted under the article,
which has emerged as major tool for restricting free speech since it
took effect in 2005. The authorities have repeatedly stated their
intention of amending the article. Justice minister Mehmet Ali Sahin,
for example, told the Anatolia news agency on 6 November that the
government had decided to amend it. He said the cabinet would
consider the various amendment proposals `at the first opportunity.’
At the start of this month, the justice ministry submitted a draft
amendment to the national assembly’s laws commission, which must now
examine it. It proposes replacing `humiliating the Turkish identity’
by `humiliating the Turkish people’ and `humiliating the republic’ by
`humiliating the Turkish republic.’ It proposes eliminating paragraph
4 of the article that says `any expression of thought in the form of
criticism cannot be sanctioned.’
The proposed amendment would also reduce the maximum penalty from
three years in prison to two. The justice ministry’s permission would
henceforth be required for anyone to be prosecuted under the article.
(The new deputy prime minister, former justice minister Cemil Ciçek,
thinks a commission, rather than the ministry itself, should decide
whether to give permission.) And finally, it would also eliminate
paragraph 3, which says : `If a Turkish citizen living abroad
humiliates the Turkish identity, the penalty is increased by a
third.’
This falls well short of satisfying Reporters Without Borders, which
calls for the complete repeal of article 301, as the proposed
amendment offers no solution to the problem of the article’s
arbitrary application by judges.
Many tributes will be paid to Dink throughout the world. In
Istanbul, a rally is to be held at 3 p.m. tomorrow outside Agos. A
list of planned events can be seen as this address :
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
