By:
| ORHAN KEMAL CENGİZ o.cengiz@todayszaman.com |
The government has introduced a new institution which we all welcomed at first. I am talking about the newly established ombudsman.
However, t
he government’s choice to fill the role has shaken all the country’s democrats from head to toe. It’s like a bad joke; it is an insult to anyone with a little intelligence in this country. Our conscience was deeply wounded with this appointment.
The government appointed, through parliamentary election, one of those judges from the Supreme Court of Appeals who voted in favor of punishing Hrant Dink under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) for the infamous article that brought about charges of “insulting Turkishness” to be the ombudsman. Actually, later on I learned that he was not only one of the judges who voted to sentence Hrant, but he, in particular, was one of those who actively lobbied to get this punishment. This former judge has taken his oath before Parliament and will very soon take office as Turkey’s first ombudsman.
I do not know if you remember all this time later what it was that lead to Hrant’s murder. He was first labeled an Armenian who insulted Turks, and then, of course, became an open target and was shot down in front of the Armenian Agos weekly in 2007. It is such a sad, painful story to remember.
Everything started with a media campaign. Hrant had uttered some words that made some circles extremely angry; he said Sabiha Gökçen, Atatürk’s adopted daughter, was actually an Armenian. His words made headlines.
Then some lawyers and some notorious figures brought lawsuits against Hrant by cherry- picking some of his words from one of the pieces in a long series of articles he published in the Agos, where he was editor-in-chief.
In this series of articles, Hrant was speaking to Armenians and advising them to get rid of hatred of Turks in order to emancipate themselves from the chains of the past. The Turkish judiciary, however, read his words in a completely distorted manner. He just said “replace the poisoned blood associated with the Turk with fresh blood associated with Armenia.” Both the court of first instance and the court of appeals evaluated this sentence as if Hrant was insulting Turkish blood, and he was sentenced to a suspended prison sentence.
I think what Hrant said was unmistakably clear. Interestingly, back then “expert opinions” requested by the courts reaffirmed that Hrant’s words had nothing to do with insulting Turkishness, but the court of appeals just wanted to understand his words as an insult under Article 301.
And now we have one of those judges who punished Hrant as the nation’s ombudsman. How on earth can a judge who has the capacity to misunderstand these words that were so clear be relied upon to understand the true meaning of the words of citizens who have problems with state institutions? Is his appointment as ombudsman a reward for his deliberate misunderstanding of Hrant’s words? Has he been appointed by the government for that very purpose, namely, to make sure that he will always misunderstand the words of citizens when they have a conflict with the state?
It is hard to believe that the government chose one person out of 70 million in Turkey to be ombudsman and that this person happened to be the one who sent Hrant Dink to his death by deliberately misinterpreting his statements.
In my view, with this move alone, the government cancelled out 1,000 good things they have done, like they killed our hopes for the future of this country.