Fethiye Çetin (2nd left), chief lawyer on behalf of the family of Dink, spoke to the press at a conference on Friday organized by Hrant’s Friends. (Photo: Today’s Zaman)
13 September 2013 /YONCA POYRAZ DOĞAN, İSTANBUL
“When the Supreme Court of Appeals decision came out, it sounded good because it overturned the decision of the lower court, which found no evidence that a terrorist organization was involved in the assassination of Dink, but the fact is that although the high court says there is an armed organization, it limits that terrorist organization’s scope, members and aims, putting us in a position worse than back to square one,” said Fethiye Çetin, chief lawyer on behalf of the family of Dink, at a press conference on Friday organized by Hrant’s Friends, who held demonstrations before each trial demanding justice during the five-year-long trial in the Dink case.
The 9th Chamber of the Supreme Court of Appeals in May overturned the lower court ruling acquitting the suspects of forming a terrorist organization, but it said they were guilty of forming an illegal and armed organization to commit a crime in line with Turkish Penal Code (TCK) Article 220.
“According to the 9th Chamber of the Supreme Court of Appeals, that organization was established in 2004 by Yasin Hayal with political motives and it consists of a few other people, including Erhan Tuncel, and since those ultranationalist people were all angry at Dink, who was put on trial with the accusation of ‘insulting Turkishness,’ they wanted to punish Dink,” Çetin said.
She also pointed out discrepancies in the explanation of the ruling. One such discrepancy, she explained, is that Dink was not even sentenced in 2004 for the crime that was attributed to him.
In addition, she said that the 14th High Criminal Court, which will hold its first hearing on Tuesday in the new case, is most likely to act within the limits drawn by the Supreme Court of Appeals and, as a result, people who seek justice will suffer for a few more years.
“The verdict of the high court for us has been like living with a bad illness rather than dying; however, somebody from the Dink family said that this result will kill us miserably through great suffering,” Çetin added. “The murder can never be solved unless public officials complicit in the murder are brought to justice.”
Dink, the late editor-in-chief of the Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos, was shot dead on Jan. 19, 2007, by ultranationalist teenager Ogün Samast outside the offices of his newspaper in İstanbul in broad daylight.
The hitman Samast was tried in a juvenile court because he was a minor at the time of the crime and sentenced to nearly 23 years in prison. As a result of the İstanbul 14th High Criminal Court’s ruling issued on Jan. 17 of last year, Hayal was given a life sentence for inciting Samast to commit murder. Tuncel, who worked as an informant for the Trabzon Police Department, was found not guilty of the murder and was acquitted.
The judge at the time said they acquitted the suspects of organized crime charges, but this does not mean that there was no organization involved, rather that there was not enough evidence to prove the actions of this organization.
Dink’s lawyers had submitted a petition to the Supreme Court of Appeals arguing that the court ruling violated the TCK by acknowledging the existence of a criminal organization but concluding it could not be located as it remains secret, adding that the court ignored evidence of the organization in the case.
As the verdict of the lower court was met with outrage by civil society groups, politicians and others, tens of thousands of people marched in protest.
Hakan Bakırcıoğlu, another lawyer representing the family of Dink, explained at the same press conference on Friday that the lawyers for the Dink family and the co-plaintiffs in the case presented evidence indicating that Samast was not acting alone and have documented that the police force in Trabzon, where most of the suspects are from and where the assassination plot was hatched, and the İstanbul Police Department knew about the murder.
The lawyers have been expressing their frustration that there may have been attempts to protect the suspects. A lengthy list of suspicious irregularities in the Dink murder investigation, including deleted records and hidden files, suggestive of a police cover-up attempt, has marred the judicial process.
Since the day of the murder, mounting evidence has indicated that the police were tipped off about the assassination plot some months before the actual attack. İstanbul’s police chief has also acknowledged that there was a tip-off about a possible attack on Dink, but said its priority level was too low for his department to take it seriously.
The European Court of Human Rights [ECtHR] ruled in Sept. 2010 that Turkey had failed to investigate and prosecute those who were responsible for Dink’s murder and this constitutes a violation of Dink’s right to life.
There are many questions remain to be answered, Çetin said; for example, why Zekeriya Öz, the former prosecutor conducting the investigation into Ergenekon — the clandestine network of coup plotters — did not merge the main Dink case with the Ergenekon case.
“Was that because the Ergenekon case was intentionally limited to punish only coup plotters? Is there a tacit agreement to cover other actions of Ergenekon which was likened to Gladio but no acts of it — other than the [2007] attack at the Council of State — were brought to light? Where are its assassinations and murders?” she asked, adding that those questions should be answered by prosecutors.
Garo Paylan, member of the group Hrant’s Friends, said at the press conference that they will again meet on Tuesday at the court which will hold its new hearing on the Dink case and repeat their calls for justice.
“Our slogan is ‘leave the fake performance, prosecute those who are primarily liable,” he said.