Turkish 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.