Hürriyet, Turkey
Feb 2 2007
Mehmet Y. Yilmaz: Why was Yasin Hayal not convicted as a "terrorist"?
The word "terror" is a general term that we use to describe threats
or actions meant to force people to accept certain thoughts or
behavior.
It is a word we use to talk about the utter discounting of human
life, the use of innocent people as targets, the killing of others in
complete disregard for the rules of war, or the kidnapping,
terrifying, injuring, and provocation of others.
One of terror’s "specialities" is that there is no importance
attached to who the victims might be of the specific act. Terror
appears to hit randomly.
Within these parameters, I think it is time we have a serious
discussion in Turkey over how it is that a person who bombed a
McDonald’s with a weapon of his own making was not immediately put
into the category of "terrorist."
I am talking about Yasin Hayal, the man who gave the orders to kill
Hrant Dink, and who putthe gun into Ogun Samast’s hands. I am talking
about the trial that he stood through in Trabzon following his
bombing of the McDonald’s there.
In a report published yesterday in another Turkish newspaper, there
was a comparison made between the trial of Yasin Hayal, which wound
up in this man serving only 10 months, and the trial of two people
caught in Ankara with molotof-cocktails who then served two years.
Hayal carried out a terror act in Trabzon, and was responsible for
the injury of 6 people in the aftermath. By comparison, the two
people in Ankara, though preparing for some sort of terror act, never
carried through with it, and were caught before they did anything.
It is because Hayal’s act was not considered "terror" that we face
the tableau we do right now. We have the right to learn why it is
that justice made the decisions it did in his case. We need to learn
how such a "mistake" could have been made. Is the Justice Ministry
looking into this?