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Diyarbakir: Kışanak: every moment losses to account those who killed Hrant Dink

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aa_picture_20150120_4330673_webDiyarbakir Diyarbakir Armenians of Turkey Peace Assembly Secretariat, 20 January Kayapınar Cultural Center Conference Hall “Hrant Dink Memorial Panel” was held.

Panel Mayor of Diyarbakir, as well as HDPE Gültan Kışanak Co-Deputy Chairman Meral Danis jacks, Diyarbakır Bar Association Chairman Tahir Envoy joined with the citizens.

Gültan Kışanak, human values ​​in Dink’s party, fraternity, said the land of how to get rich but one of these infertile lands they remember how much effort they exerted.

They could not get the Hrant Dink murder those aspirations. They are of Armenian people living in this land, the voice of Hrant which to attempt to be a pale silence, they believe that they will turn a page,” said Kışanak, Dink, of the land in the Armenian people forever will also live as a symbol of brotherhood of peoples, he said.

“Turkey Unsolved Murders cemetery”

Dink’s murder by about recently that new developments and Kışanak reminded that the arrests related to the case, “When Hrant slaughterers and accountability across society his back olds availability for this country is a great loss to humanity. Turkey turned into almost unsolved murders graveyard case. They örtündük above, the powers behind gizlendik, giving them the courage to pull the trigger, we will continue to protect them mentality came blackout “he said.

After the panel, lived 22 years after the US homeland to come to settle in Diyarbakir Armenian artist Udi Yervant Bostanci and Ilhan another Armenian artist Stefan, Kurdish, Turkish and Armenian sang songs. (AA)

Jailed Turkish Journalist Speaks about Dink Assassination Cover-up

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nedim_sener_arrestTurkish journalist Nedim Sener being taken into custody by police

ISTANBUL (Agencia Prensa Armenia)—On the 8th anniversary of Hrant Dink’s murder, Prensa Armenia interviewed Nedim Sener, a Turkish journalist that investigated the large amount of evidence on the role of the police, close to the Gülen Movement, in preparing the ground for the murder of Hrant Dink.

He spent a year at a high security prison in Silivri on charges of being a member of an armed terrorist organization and he is currently facing a possible sentence of 15 years in his trial.

PRENSA ARMENIA: What did Hrant Dink represent for the Turkish society? Was he dangerous?

NEDIM SENER: Hrant Dink was the peacemaker, the representative of peace for the Turkish society, but it was dangerous for the Turkish state. In his youth he had been persecuted accused of involvement in leftist and pro-Armenian activities and after founding the Agos newspaper, he was under close surveillance. All this proves that Dink was seen as dangerous to the state. He wanted to prove that discussions in Turkey about the Armenian Genocide were possible to make them in a language of peace and empathy, but he was not allowed. Instead of friendship, enmity and fear won.

P.A.: Who was behind his murder?

N.S.: The gang who pulled the trigger and the officials that the state had on the street. We know all the names and years ago we wrote about them. The intelligence service of the Police, the National Intelligence Organization and the Border Police are responsible for first-degree murder. A part of the research includes the members of the Gülen community. Soon we will see progress on this issue, and that will open the case again.

A.P.: What was the role of Gülen in the construction of the repressive apparatus in Turkey?

N.S.: The seeds of fear in society were sown long before the growth of the Gülen Movement. The Gülen community is the basis of today’s climate of fear through the state bureaucracy, particularly the police, the intelligence, the Attorney General and through the media that they handle. The news published in their media were the first to support the police and prosecutors operations that filed charged against journalists who were arrested and imprisoned as members of a terrorist organization. In fact, after the documents that I wrote concerning Ergenekon, the books about Fetullah Gülen, assassination of Hrant Dink and the lies of intelligence, I was their target.

A.P.: What is your opinion about the recent raids on journalists in Turkey?

N.S.: Press freedom leads the list of the worst things that happen in Turkey. The previous discussion was on this subject, but the events show us that it is now a matter of freedom of expression. Not only they accuse you for what you write in newspapers or books, but you can also be brought before a judge or tribunal for what you write on Twitter or Facebook. Therefore in Turkey the issue is not only of press freedom but also of what society writes.

Turkey, Why will the Hrant Dink murder not be solved?

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By ORHAN KEMAL CENGİZ,

102After Hrant Dink was murdered, gendarmerie and police officers took turns taking photos with his murderer, Ogün Samast, at the offices of Samsun’s counterterrorism unit. They took these photos in front of a calendar on which Atatürk’s words, “The homeland cannot be abandoned,” appeared on a Turkish flag.

When Samast was taken into Bayrampaşa Prison after he was arrested, there was a very warm welcome for him. According to eyewitnesses, gendarmerie officers and prison guards lined up in the hall and they all applauded Samast.

After Samast was arrested, all of a sudden some young football fans started to wear white berets to show their sympathy with the murderer, who was wearing a white beret when he killed Hrant.

On Jan. 19, 2014, when the last commemoration of the Dink murder took place, some police officers were wearing white berets on the streets as the procession passed by even though the weather was 18 degrees Celsius.

Do you know who Turkey’s first ombudsman was? He was a member of the chamber of the criminal court that approved Hrant Dink’s sentence of insulting Turkishness, under Article 301 of the Constitution. I assume you can recall how Hrant was convicted. Some of his words were cherry-picked from a long series of articles he wrote mainly for diaspora Armenians. And these carefully tweezed words were represented as insults to Turkey. It was so obvious that his remarks had nothing to do with Turks; he was addressing Armenians.
Dink called on Armenians to get rid of their hatred towards Turks, and so on. Even though legal experts and even some prosecutors pointed out that his words said nothing to insult Turks, the appeals court “misunderstood” them.

When Hrant’s murderer was caught, he referred to these “misunderstood” words and said he had punished Hrant for insulting Turkishness.

Do you know who brought this case against Hrant? The complaint was made by a very famous lawyer who was conducting a psychological lynching campaign against religious minorities and intellectuals. Lawyer Kemal Kerinçsiz was later on arrested for his connection to the Ergenekon organization. However, he is free now, like all the Ergenekon suspects.

Before Hrant was killed, intelligence reports arrived at the İstanbul Police Department stating that Samast had traveled from Trabzon to İstanbul with the intention of killing Hrant. None of the officers acted on this intelligence.

You see, when we talk about Hrant Dink’s murder we are talking about a huge subject. There are hit men, provocateurs, people who aided and abetted murderers, officers who did nothing to prevent a murder they knew was coming and so on. At the same time, there is a culture and atmosphere of hatred towards Armenians that is fed by the denial of past atrocities.

Today, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) wants us to believe that they will solve this murder by arresting a few police officers, and somehow these police officers are said to be associated with the Gülen movement, with which this government has been in a huge war for quite some time.

They are the ones who chose this ombudsman, who freed the Ergenekon suspects and who promoted the former governor of İstanbul to the post of interior minister. And they are the ones who continue to deny what happened to Armenians in 1915.

And they want us to believe that they will solve this murder by making a few apologies!

Turkey Cizre’s new police chief wanted as part of Dink murder case

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202445_newsdetailTurkish author and human rights activist Adalet Ağaoğlu (L) places carnations outside the Agos newspaper building during a ceremony to mark the sixth anniversary of the killing of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in İstanbul in this 2012 file photo. (Photo: Reuters)
Newly appointed police chief of Turkey’s southeastern district of Cizre, where at least six people were killed in turmoil, is now wanted by the court as part of an investigation into the killing of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

Ercan Demir, who was appointed as Cizre’s district police chief earlier this year, was presiding over a district where tensions were running high. Both Interior Minister Efkan Ala and jailed leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) Abdullah Öcalan warned against “provocations” in the district.

Demir was questioned as a “suspect” as part of the investigation by prosecutors in İstanbul courthouse on Jan. 12, but a court released him pending trial. İstanbul prosecutors appealed the court’s decision and İstanbul’s Penal Court of Peace issued an arrest warrant for Demir on Friday on charges of “negliglence over the murder.”

Demir was serving as the Chief of the Intelligence Unit at Trabzon Police Department when Dink was gunned down.

Istanbul Former Police Chief Cerrah testifies in Armenian journalist Dink murder case

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ISTANBUL – Anadolu Agency Report

n_75645_1Former Istanbul Police Chief Celalettin Cerrah gave his testimony to the public prosecutor’s office on Dec. 15 in the case into the murder of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink.

Cerrah gave his testimony at an Istanbul courthouse, suspected of negligence in Dink’s murder in 2007 when Cerrah was the Istanbul police chief. He did not respond to questions while leaving the courthouse after his testimony.

The list of suspects in the Dink murder case has been broadened, with the court listening to more high-ranking officials amid a move to merge the case of the convicted shooter with that of the alleged instigators.

The Istanbul deputy chief prosecutor and prosecutor of terrorism and organized crimes unit, Yusuf Hakkı Doğan is heading the investigation into the assassination.

Dink was assassinated by Ogün Samast, who was 17-years-old at the time, in broad daylight on a busy street outside the office of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos in Istanbul’s Şişli district on Jan. 19, 2007. The assassination caused outrage across the country, leading to hundreds of thousands rallying in the streets.

Ergun Güngör, the Istanbul deputy governor at the time, testified on Dec. 9 at an Istanbul court as a suspect accused of negligence.

A day earlier, Ahmet İlhan Güler, the then-chief of police intelligence, testified. The then-Trabzon police chief Reşat Altay has also been called to testify.

A Bakırköy district court in Istanbul canceled the dismissal of charges against officials on June 6, handing the case to the Istanbul chief public prosecutor’s office. Another court decision ruled to combine convicted assailant Samast’s case at the juvenile court with a case at the fifth high criminal court, in which Yusuf Hayal and Erhan Tuncel are accused of convincing Samast in the Black Sea province of Trabzon to shoot Dink in Istanbul.

December/15/2014

 

Turkey Convenient murderer “Dink’s murder and the 3 Paris killings”

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e-uslu-b-1

EMRE USLU

e.uslu@todayszaman.com

The murder of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink is the most scandalous, mysterious murder; it was committed during the term of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), and the assailants were apprehended. However, these assailants were being used at the time they committed the murder and are still being used.

Those who used them in the past to kill Dink, whom they saw as their enemy, are now using them to attack new enemies. One of the assailants hurled accusations at police officers as soon as he was released from prison. Those who gave him the gun to slay Dink have apparently given him a petition of complaint against several police officers and have sent him to the prosecutor.

There are odd details in the statement that the murderer gave to the prosecutor. For instance, he gave the prosecutor the badge numbers of five police officers, claiming that these police officers had looked up the telephone number of Yasin Hayal, who was allegedly involved in the murder of Dink, in the police department’s computer system five minutes after the murder. How he got these numbers is questionable, because he was in prison for the last few years.

Apparently his masters who sent him to attack Christian missionaries and Armenians — whom they stigmatized as enemies — are preparing to send him to attack their new enemy, the Hizmet movement. Or do you believe that a murderer who has been silent out of fear for many years in prison learned the badge numbers of five police officers in his dreams and decided to be an informant?

Let me tell you why this “convenient” murderer has been ordered to talk: The government seeks to curry favor with the leftists and liberals in the fight it has been waging against the Hizmet movement. If it can manage to put the blame for Dink’s murder on those police officers whom it portrays as being affiliated with the movement, the government will be able to criminalize the movement and alienate the liberals who support the movement…

I have reiterated this countless times. The ruling AKP, prosecutors and Nedim Şener, who wrote a book about Dink’s murder, were all unwilling to investigate the murder in depth and with the intention of finding out the mastermind behind the murder. Everything was being done to cover up the connection of the murder to the state.

If you really want to find the real perpetrators of Dink’s murder, you must focus on the powers that are behind the murderers and not on the murderers themselves. But you won’t do this because those powers don’t want you to do so. There is a single document the court must investigate if it is really willing to investigate Dink’s murder and the killing of several Christian missionaries in Malatya: the decisions taken during the National Security Council (MGK) meetings held in 2004 about the activities of Christian missionaries and the Armenian issue.

Why did the Religious Affairs Directorate decide to take action against the missionary activities and sponsor a book about them? Why did certain media outlets start to churn out news stories and TV programs as though Turkey was snowed under with Christian minorities?

I know you won’t search for the answer because you have always been the state’s prosecutor or judge. But let me write it down: 2005 was the 90th anniversary of the Armenian tragedy. The state took certain measures at home and abroad in connection with it.

The sponsorship of a book about Christian missionaries by the Religious Affairs Directorate was one of these measures. Under the same project, media outlets kicked off campaigns to engineer public opinion and several experts on the Armenian issue mushroomed out of nowhere to make appearances on several TV channels.

Şener’s book about Dink’s murder is also part of those measures, as it serves to cover up the mastermind behind the murder. One day, the truth will come out…

Dink was sacrificed as a result of those measures. An independent court would not waste time on the claims made by a convenient murderer, but instead investigate who gave the order to that murderer.

Some may say “Dink was murdered in 2006,” but I would like to draw attention to the killing of three Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) members in Paris in 2013. The state made a decision in 2012 to act against the PKK leaders. In the wake of the Uludere tragedy — in which 34 civilians were mistaken for terrorists and killed by military airstrikes in Şırnak’s Uludere district in 2011 due to false intelligence — the state adopted a new concept, but old “measures” were kept in force. The state initiated peace talks with the PKK, but at the same time, it also killed off the PKK leaders. This is what we get from the media reports that appeared in the wake of the Paris killings.

As a result of such measures, Murat Karayılan, the PKK military wing’s number one, was captured in Iran. A very high-ranking intelligence officer had said: “We cannot go and capture Karayılan using the intelligence from the US while the state was negotiating with the PKK. Therefore, we gave the information to the Iranians, who caught him.”

This is the way the state operates. It worked in the same manner in Dink’s murder and with the Paris killings. My intention is not to protect the police or military officers who should be held responsible for the murder. My suggestion is that all police and military officers who were in office at that time, politicians and those who took those decisions at the MGK should be tried by a real and independent court and not with fake investigations, fake indictments and fake courts. This could be the Constitutional Court or an international court, but it must be a real court to punish the real perpetrators. But Turkey cannot do this because everyone knows the real perpetrators. This murder cannot be resolved but is instead covered up by fake courts, fake indictments, expedient murderers and fake books.

Dink’s murder was one of the results of the measures the state took in 2005, i.e., on the 90th anniversary of the Armenian issue. 2015 is the 100th anniversary of this issue and Turkey is taking new measures. Perhaps, the first of these measures is to make that convenient murderer talk…

Turkey, Former police chief was called to testify in Dink trial

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198198_newsdetailFormer police chief Ali Fuat Yılmazer was called to testify as part of an investigation into the killing of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink as a suspect. report Zaman

Prosecutor Yusuf Hakkı Doğan is supervising the investigation and summoned Yılmazer, who was on duty at İstanbul Police Intelligence Unit. Yılmazer previously said he was on duty abroad when the killing took place and denied any responsibility. The prosecutor reportedly also called Ogün Samast, the hit man in the murder of Dink, who was fatally shot outside the Agos weekly office in 2007, as a witness. Former İstanbul Police Chief Celalettin Cerrah will also be summoned as part of the investigation.

Yılmazer is currently behind bars on wiretapping charges.

Turkey 9 public officials face investigation for negligence in Dink murder

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195252_newsdetailFormer İstanbul Police Chief Celalettin Cerrah is among the nine public officials who face an investigation on a charge of negligence in the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. (Photo: Cihan) report TodayZaman

Nine public officials, including former İstanbul Deputy Governor Ergun Güngör and former İstanbul Police Chief Celalettin Cerrah, are facing an investigation on a charge of negligence in the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who was assassinated in broad daylight outside the office of his Agos newspaper on Jan. 17, 2007.

The lawyers of Hrant Dink’s family had filed a complaint in 2011 with the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office against Güngör; Cerrah; the former chief of the İstanbul Police Department’s intelligence unit, Ahmet İlhan Güngör; and six other police officers on the grounds that those public officials were negligent in preventing Dink’s murder.

After the complaint, the chief public prosecutor’s office applied to the İstanbul Governor’s Office to ask for permission to investigate those listed public officials. However, the governor’s office did not give this permission to the prosecutor’s office. After the governor’s office’s decision, the prosecutors decided not to prosecute.

However, the Dink family filed an appeal with the Bakırköy 8th High Criminal Court to annul the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office’s decision not to prosecute.

On May 21 of this year, the Bakırköy court decided to cancel the prosecutor’s office’s decision not to prosecute.

After the decision of the high criminal court, the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office applied to the Justice Ministry, requesting that the Supreme Court of Appeals’ Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office appeal the Bakırköy 8th High Criminal Court’s verdict.

The Justice Ministry rejected this request, opening the way for an investigation into the public officials against whom the Dink family originally filed the criminal complaint.

This recent decision has paved the way for the judgment of the public officials on the charge of negligence in the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Dink.

Dink was shot and killed by an ultra-nationalist teenager seven years ago. The hit man, Ogün Samast, and 18 others were brought to trial. During the process, the lawyers for the Dink family and the co-plaintiffs in the case presented evidence indicating that Samast did not act alone. Another suspect, Yasin Hayal, was given life in prison for inciting Samast to murder. However, Erhan Tuncel, who worked as an informant for the Trabzon Police Department and was the man accused of initiating the effort to have Dink murdered, was found not guilty of the murder.

Turkey, Court should request Dink murder documents from military: Turkish intelligence

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ISTANBUL

n_73142_1Turkey’s national intelligence agency (MİT) has referred a court to the country’s top military body to learn whether intelligence documents related to the Hrant Dink murder were classified as a state secret. Hurriyet daily news report

Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was shot dead by then-17-year-old Ogün Samast in front of his Istanbul office on Jan. 19, 2007. Samast, who was sentenced to over 22 years in jail for the murder, is also on trial for being a member of a terrorist organization, as the alleged network behind the crime is yet to be revealed.

The latest trial session was held at the Istanbul 2nd Heavy Penal Court for Children on Oct. 17. The jailed Samast was not present in the courtroom and was represented by his lawyer.

The court had earlier twice asked the MİT about the “top-secret” and “secret” documents that the spy agency had sent to Parliament’s Coup Research Commission. The MİT did not give a clear answer whether the documents constitute a state secret, only stressing that they included “claims.”

The MİT answered the question more directly in the Oct. 17 session. “It would be appropriate to ask the General Staff whether the requested information was state secrets or not,” it said.

The Dink family’s lawyer, meanwhile, said the documents should be released. “The documents that the MİT sent to Parliament should be given to us too,” lawyer Hakan Bakırcıoğlu said.

October/17/2014

Turkey to portray Diaspora Armenians as ‘sectarians’: scholar

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Seven years have passed since Hrant Dink’s assassination and those who planned his murder remain free. While the search for justice continues with a second round of trials, there seems to be insufficient political will Taner Akcamto uncover the truth, Taner Akcam, Professor of Armenian Genocide Studies at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University, writes.

“Hrant Dink was killed in revenge for the assassination of Talat Pasha, the architect of the Armenian Genocide. Everything about his murder suggested a “vengeance operation” for the 1921 conspiracy to assassinate Talat Pasha in Berlin. This, for example, accounts for the decision to murder Hrant Dink in public rather than to kidnap him, kill him, and throw his remains in some remote location—the way all the other “unknown perpetrator” crimes have been committed in Turkey. The conspirators deliberately chose to come up from behind and to shoot him in the head on the street, in front of Agos, the newspaper he edited. The operation mirrored precisely how Talat Pasha was killed. His attackers wanted revenge for the murder of Talat Pasha, and they did so by targeting Hrank Dink.In the Shadow of 1915: Reflections on Hrant’s Assassination,”Akcam writes in a piece titled “In the Shadow of 1915: Reflections on Hrant’s Assassination”.

“Ninety years of state-sponsored denial have so blinded the public that we cannot conceive of the relationship between the 1915 genocide and the murder of Hrant Dink. But while the Turkish government has pushed us to forget the events of 1915, state officials have not forgotten. Turks grow uneasy at the mention of “genocide,” and calls for “genocide recognition” cause us to flee in terror before some unknown retribution. We resist using Hrant’s death as an opportunity to face up to history, to see the connection between that history and the killing of an Armenian newspaper editor. We are made to forget Hrant although he is the key—the key to the 40th chamber in the Arabian Nights fable, the one that others do not want opened, the key that is given to the heroes of those tales. We have a treasure chamber in our old houses where all of our secrets are kept. And Hrant is the key to that room. If the Hrant Dink murder case is ever solved, the secrets behind the establishment of the Turkish Republic will be revealed. But, sadly, in the present government, there is neither the courage nor the will to furnish the key, because the government is heir to these “state traditions,” and the “keepers of its secrets”,” he writes.

Ancam predicts that as 2015 approaches, Turkey will attempt to create an atmosphere of “reconciliation.”

“Appearing ready to resolve the Armenian issue, Turkey will portray Armenians in the diaspora as uncompromising “sectarians.” For this purpose, the Turkish state will undertake a search for so-called “Good Armenians”—and it will find them! It will use these puppets as a counter-weight to the “intransigent,” “belligerent,” and “uncompromising” Armenians in the diaspora. They will seek to pit their “Good” Armenians against the “Bad” Armenians of the diaspora. And they will use Hrant for this purpose, too. They will find the criticisms Hrant leveled at the Armenian Diaspora and use them without hesitation. Hrant’s own words will be exploited as a part of a new wave of hostility toward the Armenian Diaspora,” he writes, warning: “Do not be duped by this cynical scenario.”

“Hrant Dink was murdered because he wanted to deconstruct Turkey’s founding myths. Those who planned the murder—the real culprits—have received promotions and praise for doing so. The sensitivity the government expressed over the confiscation of Armenian property was never shown toward the lives of Armenians. On the contrary, they oversaw the annihilation of a people. And the situation today is not so different! 1.5 million-plus-1,” Akcam writes.

source: PanARMENIAN.Net