In what many said was a shocking and frustrating ruling for the five-year-long trial in the Dink case, an İstanbul court found in early 2012 that there was no illegal organization involved in the murder according to evidence submitted to the court and cleared all suspects in the case of membership in a terrorist organization, angering lawyers and many others who said the trial failed to shed light on alleged connections between the suspects and state officials.
The court convicted Yasin Hayal of instigating a murder and sentenced him to life in prison, while another suspected instigator, Erhan Tuncel, was acquitted by the court. “We acquitted the suspects of organized crime charges. This ruling does not mean that there was no organization involved. This means that there was not enough evidence to prove the actions of this organization,” the judge said.
In June 2012, Dink’s lawyers submitted a petition to the Supreme Court of Appeals, arguing that the court ruling violated the Turkish Penal Code (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 organization in the case.
On Wednesday, the 9th Chamber of the Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the life sentence of Hayal but revised the verdict of the lower court, saying that the suspects were members of “an organization established for the purpose of criminal activities,” not “an armed terrorist organization,” as the lower court had said in its ruling. The higher court also asked for a retrial.
Dink, the late editor-in-chief of the Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos, was shot dead in broad daylight on Jan. 19, 2007, by an ultranationalist teenager outside the offices of his newspaper in İstanbul.