Prosecutors launch probe into Dink funeral slogans

23.02.2007
Today’s Zaman İstanbul

This story is quite remarkable, if the prosecution goes ahead it will tarnish Turkey's reputation further in the world opinion.

The prosecutor's office for Istanbul's Şişli district has launched an investigation into Şişli Mayor Mustafa Sarıgül and the committee that organized the funeral for journalist Hrant Dink, the slain editor of the Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos, for the slogans "We are all Armenian; We are all Hrant Dink," according to a report from Milliyet daily.

The slogans were printed on posters and chanted by marchers during Dink's funeral procession through downtown Istanbul. Last month, hundreds of thousands of Turks poured into the streets of Istanbul after Hrant Dink's murder, many chanting, "We are all Hrant Dink; We are all Armenian," in an unprecedented display of solidarity. The slogans angered ultranationalist circles and drew criticism from even moderately nationalistic groups.

A reporter for a local daily in the northern city of Sinop, Mete Çağdaş, filed a complaint to the local prosecutor's office in Sinop. Çağdaş's application accused Şişli Mayor Mustafa Sarıgül and the funeral organizers of turning the atmosphere at the funeral into one for a fallen "militant," a term used subjectively in this case to discredit the legitimacy of the protests.

The application read: "Those in the procession chanted, 'We are all Hrant; We are all Armenian,' and carried banners with the same expressions. Is this not racism?"
Çağdaş's complaint also claimed that the slogan "Murderer 301," suggesting that anti-free speech penal code Article 301 under which Dink had been tried and convicted was a major factor behind the killing, was itself an insult to the Turkish Penal Code, which in turn was a violation of the law. Mayor Sarıgül and the organizers were also blamed for not having unfurled any flags of the Republic of Turkey, the complaint file noted.

According to Milliyet's report, the chief prosecutor's office in Sinop had no jurisdiction in the case and relayed the file to the Şişli chief prosecutor's office in late January. Şişli prosecutors launched an investigation which might end up in a law suit against the organizers or in dismissal. In either case, the Şişli office will have to make a statement clarifying its opinion of the funeral slogans.

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Suspected killer of Dink hospitalised

The suspected murderer of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was hospitalised overnight and underwent surgery for appendicitis, doctors said Thursday.
Ogün Samast was taken to hospital under heavy security measures, the agency said.
Samast, 17, is in good shape after the operation in a state hospital in the northwestern city of Izmit and is expected to be discharged at the weekend, chief physician Şenol Ergüney told Anatolia news agency.

The suspect, who has confessed to shooting Dink outside the Istanbul office of his bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos on January 19, had been incarcerated in a maximum security prison in the nearby town of Kandira, about 100 kilometres (62 miles) east of Istanbul.

Seven other people have been jailed for involvement in the murder, believed to have been committed with ultra-nationalist motives.

The 52-year-old Dink, a leading member of Turkey's tiny Armenian community, called the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire genocide, a label that Ankara's official line on the massacres fiercely rejects.


Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.