The Assassination of Hrant Dink

[Steph]

This so-called "deep government" in Turkey, a very convenient scapegoat for all turkey's nasty little actions......."I'm sorry it wasn't me, it was my other self, I'm diagnosed schizophrenic, you know"
It's about time the turkish people......no I can't finish what I really want to say,
the turkish people are beyond redemption.

[Joseph]

The only thing which was not included in the report was the white beret

Details have been revealed about the report sent by Trabzon's Security Directorate 11 months before the Dink killing. It turned out; the report which was intended to warn the Istanbul Security Department about a possible assassination attempt against Hrant Dink had included almost every single detail about the planned murder.

Istanbul's Governor Güler has given investigation permit on former Intelligence Bureau Director ?lhan Güler, for neglecting his duty and failing to communicate the report with the Istanbul Security Directorate.

The report which was sent to Istanbul 11 months before the assassin wrote: "Yasin Hayal hates Armenians and he is planning to kill Agos Newspaper Editor-in-Chief Hrant Dink in Istanbul for humiliating Turkishness."

Publish Date: 02.04.2007
Link: http://english.sabah.com.tr/6CAB2A22...59663E959.html
Copyright © 2003-2006 All rights reserved.
MERKEZ GAZETE DERG? BASIM YAYINCILIK SANAY? VE T?CARET A.?.
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[ardakilic]

This so-called "deep government" in Turkey, a very convenient scapegoat for all turkey's nasty little actions......."I'm sorry it wasn't me, it was my other self, I'm diagnosed schizophrenic, you know"
It's about time the turkish people......no I can't finish what I really want to say,
the turkish people are beyond redemption.

Athough you are right and i agree prima facie, i didnt use the term "deep government" as a scape-goat but a definition of a cruel government which sees its nation as enemy since more than a century.

Turkish society does/did not show any reaction to this "deepness". But this can be a hasty generalization, because there are more than 30 rebellions between 1918-38 and 500 000 people were killed by the state in this era.

However, in 1960 army coup, prime minister and two ministers was hanged: silence...
In 1971, an army coup again: silence...
In 70s, many young leftist-socialist young people were killed by nationalists: silence...
In, 1980, an army coup supported by USA (USA Ankara consulate said after the coup: "Our boys have done it!"), hundreds of thousand arrests, hangs etc: silence...
For 80 years, Kurdish people was oppressed, Turkish society is again silent...

I know the great part of the responsibility is on Turkish society and if this situation continues we will still be complaining about "deepness".

[Joseph]

Athough you are right and i agree prima facie, i didnt use the term "deep government" as a scape-goat but a definition of a cruel government which sees its nation as enemy since more than a century.

Turkish society does/did not show any reaction to this "deepness". But this can be a hasty generalization, because there are more than 30 rebellions between 1918-38 and 500 000 people were killed by the state in this era.

However, in 1960 army coup, prime minister and two ministers was hanged: silence...
In 1971, an army coup again: silence...
In 70s, many young leftist-socialist young people were killed by nationalists: silence...
In, 1980, an army coup supported by USA (USA Ankara consulate said after the coup: "Our boys have done it!"), hundreds of thousand arrests, hangs etc: silence...
For 80 years, Kurdish people was oppressed, Turkish society is again silent...

I know the great part of the responsibility is on Turkish society and if this situation continues we will still be complaining about "deepness".

Thanks for the insight, Ardakilic.

[phantom]

Athough you are right and i agree prima facie, i didnt use the term "deep government" as a scape-goat but a definition of a cruel government which sees its nation as enemy since more than a century.

Turkish society does/did not show any reaction to this "deepness". But this can be a hasty generalization, because there are more than 30 rebellions between 1918-38 and 500 000 people were killed by the state in this era.

However, in 1960 army coup, prime minister and two ministers was hanged: silence...
In 1971, an army coup again: silence...
In 70s, many young leftist-socialist young people were killed by nationalists: silence...
In, 1980, an army coup supported by USA (USA Ankara consulate said after the coup: "Our boys have done it!"), hundreds of thousand arrests, hangs etc: silence...
For 80 years, Kurdish people was oppressed, Turkish society is again silent...

I know the great part of the responsibility is on Turkish society and if this situation continues we will still be complaining about "deepness".

Great observations Ardakilic. You know what they say, people deserve the government they form. The people of Turkey (true also for Armenia where government corruption is rampant) deserve their government.

[Steph]

Speaking out in the shadow of death: why Turkish intellectuals need armed guards


· 20 offered protection after murder of editor
· Activists urge end of ban on insulting Turkishness

Nicholas Birch in Istanbul
Saturday April 7, 2007
The Guardian

Abdurrahman Dilipak, an Islamist columnist and outspoken advocate of freedom of speech, has been tailed by the police for years. But these days, they shadow him for his own protection.

"Death threats come with the job," he said. "But I take them seriously now."

Following the murder in January of Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink, who was shot on a crowded Istanbul street by an ultra-nationalist teenager, he is not the only dissident getting used to life with a personal bodyguard.

Article continues
It seems clear now that the Turkish security services knew of the plot against Dink. His death spurred them to offer protection to about 20 journalists, writers and academics. One of them is Atilla Yayla, a political scientist who was branded a traitor by the press last November for questioning the cult surrounding Turkey's founder, Kemal Ataturk. Though the death threats have now slowed to a trickle, he faces up to three years in jail for "insulting the legacy of Ataturk".

"It's a strange feeling, living with a bodyguard," he said. "He protects me and I look after him. He is so much a part of me that I'm planning to buy him and his family presents." He points to the books lining the walls of the liberal association of which he is president: volumes of John Locke and Friedrich Hayek. "He's improving himself here," he said.

Other Turkish intellectuals find it harder to see the funny side. Best-selling novelist Elif Shafak, one of the most well known of 50 people taken to court by ultra-nationalists last year on charges of "insulting Turkishness", now makes few trips outside her house .

Dink "was a close friend, and I haven't got over the shock of his death", she said in a recent phone conversation. She declined to talk at length.

Interviewed by the daily Hurriyet in February, her husband, Eyup Can, said she was so upset that she was unable to breast-feed her daughter, born last September.

Meanwhile, Orhan Pamuk, the novelist who won last year's Nobel prize for literature, left Turkey under police escort on February 1, days after the man believed by police to have organised Dink's murder threatened him as he was taken into custody. Turkey's tourism ministry has since said it plans to use Pamuk in a campaign to attract tourists to the country.

When more than 100,000 people attended Dink's funeral procession, many hoped his death might mark the end of what one columnist called "the ultra-nationalist tsunami" sweeping Turkey since the start of efforts to join the EU.

In fact, the mourners and their slogan, "We are all Armenians", further angered nationalists. And one of their key demands, that the law criminalising "insults to Turkishness" should be changed, has been ignored by a government afraid of losing nationalist support in elections due this autumn.

But despite the risks they face, Turkish dissidents say they have no intention of shutting up. "Such a thing has happened that you cannot be cautious any more," said Etyen Mahcupyan, the Turkish-Armenian columnist who took over as editor of Hrant Dink's weekly newspaper, Agos, after his friend's murder. "It is immoral to be cautious."

Unprotected until January, Agos's offices are now under police guard, and a new CCTV camera surveys the patch of street where Dink died.

Like Mahcupyan, Baskin Oran knows his bodyguard will not be able to stop a professional assassination attempt.

"This nice person is protecting me from amateur killers, like the one who killed Hrant," said the political scientist, who co-wrote a 2004 government report on minority rights that many see as the catalyst for today's nationalist surge. He quoted a Turkish proverb: he who fears birds doesn't plant corn. "If you are afraid, you should stop. But how can I look into the mirror in the morning if I do stop? How can I lecture my students?"

He said that the threats and restrictions on freedom of movement were part of the growing pains of Turkish democracy, adding: "The road to paradise passes by hell, and we are walking."

[asia]

what a shame!!
the intellectuals, people who is trying to do something good in this country like hrant dink,like ugur mumcu whatever their nationality is (armenian,kurd,turk...) are killed in this country.
it's really so sad and shameful...

[Kür ŞAD]

sure?

what a shame!!
the intellectuals, people who is trying to do something good in this country like hrant dink,like ugur mumcu whatever their nationality is (armenian,kurd,turk...) are killed in this country.
it's really so sad and shameful...

Sorry but Dink was not a man who is trying to do good things in Türkiye.He was a man in the crossfire -I mean he has bad realitions with Turks and diaspora... maybe he was assasinated by somebody else...

And the other topicis that our intellectuals have been killed by our enemies.For example Necip HABLEMİTOĞLU was assasinated by German NGOs...

So maybe Hrant alsa killed by another enemy or anti-Türk organizations No body can be sure bcs nothing is the same as it seeems

[Joseph]

Sorry but Dink was not a man who is trying to do good things in Türkiye.He was a man in the crossfire -I mean he has bad realitions with Turks and diaspora... maybe he was assasinated by somebody else...

And the other topicis that our intellectuals have been killed by our enemies.For example Necip HABLEM?TO?LU was assasinated by German NGOs...

So maybe Hrant alsa killed by another enemy or anti-Türk organizations No body can be sure bcs nothing is the same as it seeems

Yeah right...please read the following


21st century’s Orwellian Oceania on the scene again

27.04.2007

by Umut Uras

http://www.observercyprus.com/observer/NewsDetails.aspx?id=1529

Three Christians were killed at a publishing house which had drawn protests by Turkish nationalists for distributing Bibles. They were tied up and had their throats slit. Christians make up only around 1 percent of Turkey's population of 71 million however, the nationalist mentality still maintains that Turkey could be taken over or split up by these people, for example, by 40-50 thousand. What is wrong with publishing and distributing a holy book, any holy book, I do not understand? Maybe it is because I am not really interested in anything religious. Everybody commented on the incident after it happened, and among these, there were still politicians blaming missionaries, saying that it is a great threat for the country.

I am re-publishing a previous article of mine from 26 January 2007, written originally in memory of Hrant Dink because what I would write is not really different than anything that follows. Turkey has a long way to go to reach European levels of democratic maturity.

Armenian Turkish journalist Hrant Dink is dead; killed by a 17 year-old Turkish youth antagonised by the Turkish mass media that rallied against Dink, declaring him a ‘traitor’. Turkey lost a brain, a democracy activist, a citizen in love with his country and a courageous intellectual standing up for what he believed in.

What has become obvious, once again after this horrible murder, is that no one is really secure in Turkey if they express an alternative to the mainstream ideas in Turkey or to the policies that maintains the state’s status quo. Apart from the existence of a Turkish ‘deep state’ in various state institutions independent of the government’s will, the public opinion manipulated by the media and the state institutions are also threats for that ‘one’, who has a ‘negative’ say on the traditional autocratic mentality and ideas in the country.

Anyone but Turkey guilty
The cold heart of politics came to light again, as government officials, like the ruling Justice and Development Party deputy Saban Disli, started to talk about how this assassination is going to be used by European governments against Turkey. Disli made his comments on Turkish television NTV a few hours after the assassination. Yes, it is really unfair that Turkey’s image is again made corrupt by this major murder in Turkey, committed by a young brainwashed Turkish citizen. It is unfair that the EU criticise the country for such a murder; they should just let it go (!).

In the same line, the leader of the ultra-nationalist Grand Unity Party, Muhsin Yazicioglu, was again creating very ‘original and intelligent’ conspiracy theories on the same day. He said that it was a move made in order to create a mess for Turkey as has been done in previous years on issues like Cyprus and the Kurdish. He said this killing would contribute to the adoption of bills on the Armenian issue awaiting foreign Parliaments, pointing to foreign forces behind the assassination. I guess this was a claim meaning that the Armenian Diaspora could be behind the assassination. Well, he was wrong.

Workers Party leader Dogu Perincek, claimed that the assassination was organised by the US and the EU, unsurprisingly to cause confusion in the country. The main opposition Republican Turkish Party leader Deniz Baykal also claimed that the assassination was organised by circles who wanted to dig under Turkey and put the country into a tough situation.
Hasan Celal Guzel, a conservative columnist and a former minister of Turkey, came up with the claim that Armenian and Kurdish circles are the primary suspects for this murder in his column in the Turkish Daily Radikal without advancing any concrete background for the claim. Nationalist newspaper Tercuman also claimed that the murderer was Armenian, again without actually indicating any proof for the claim.

An expression popular with Turkish officials was, ‘Whatever the reason is …’, to my understanding expressing that there could be valid reasons to hate this person because of his thoughts, but one did not have to kill him. In a statement the Speaker of the Parliament, Bulent Arinc, said: “Whatever the reason is, whatever purpose it carries, this is an attack against Turkey’s peace and unity as well as the nation’s domestic harmony.”

A one-sided blame game still continues with various circles’ making massive efforts to create more surreal scenarios, to spread more hatred, to make citizens on the street believe the nation, the state and the country itself have responsibility in this murder and nothing to be ashamed of. In fact there is.

Why aren’t these areas questioned?
It has always been about provocations against Turkey. In all the above statements, these well known people of Turkey blame various domestic and foreign circles, anyone, and anything apart from blaming Turkey itself. They talked about provocations by these circles but not about Turkey’s crippled democracy, almost instinctual hostility against heterogeneity, and the public and state-based targeting of any dissimilar view to any traditional mainstream way of thinking in the country. They talked as if it was not the Turkish governments’ – ironically – Justice Minister who blamed an Armenian conference as being organised by traitors; as if Article 301 was not a part of Turkish penal code used by the Turkish judicial system to target intellectuals in the country; as if nationalism was not perpetually stimulated by the mass media, politicians and various NGOs, feeding the racism within Turkey and fomenting hostility against the West; and as if the democratisation of the country has not been constantly confronted with the effects of all of these.

No one admitted that this was a racist murder; Hrant Dink was killed because he was Armenian. And the environment for this murder was created by the factors mentioned above and more.

Not surprisingly, the youthful murderer does not seem like someone who has connections with ‘hostile foreign circles’, as he is an unemployed Turkish youth with only a High School education from a very conservative and nationalist region in the country, one who could be provoked by almost anything. This is a youth who was affected by one of the ‘very creative news pieces’ on the internet like those saying that Armenians would split his country, without mentioning that there are only 40-50 thousands Armenians living in Turkey, a country of 73 million.

A lover of Turkey charged with ‘insulting Turkishness’
Dink was charged with ‘insulting Turkishness’ according to the internationally infamous Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code that punishes people who publicly denigrate Turkishness, the Republic or the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, the Government of the Republic of Turkey, the judicial institutions of the State, the military or security organizations. It also says, “Expressions of thought intended to criticise shall not constitute a crime,” but the meaning of ‘criticism’ is not defined.

I met Dink in Istanbul once at a conference on the minority issue and foundation properties in Turkey. He, again, broke down in tears when talking about the Armenians and the minority issue in Turkey in general. As far as I was told then, he had a tough past; born in Anatolia, brought up in orphanages, to come to where he was after going through many very hard times. Whenever he talked about issues that were sensitive to him in public, he would cry, as he did at that conference.

Dink knew that he had become a target with the opening of his case based on Article 301 for saying that he believed in the existence of the alleged Armenian genocide. Actually, in one of his last articles published in the Agos newspaper he said: “What did Minister of Foreign Affairs Abdullah Gul say? What did Minister of Justice Cemil Cicek say? “The issue of Article 301 should not be exaggerated. Is there someone found guilty and sent to prison?” As if paying a price always means going to prison... Just see the price... This is the price... Ministers, do you know what the price is to imprison someone with the skittishness of a dove? Do you know it? Don’t you look at doves at all? There were times when I seriously thought about leaving the country. Especially at moments when the threats focused on the ones close to me...”

He did no harm to Turkey; all he did was utter his love for his country with every opportunity he had, and expressed thoughts different than what are generally believed, or expressed, in Turkey about the alleged Armenian genocide. What he asked for many times at different times was to discuss and to be challenged for his opinions, but not to be charged for them.

A bullet to Turkey or from Turkey?
Despite being a journalist whose area of focus is International Relations and Foreign Policy, I believe democratization is more important than national interest, a citizen is more important than the state, and EU membership is more important than anything else for Turkey if we do not want to sacrifice other Hrant Dinks. As Orhan Pamuk says, the defenders of 301 are guilty of this murder; politicians, the media and intellectuals – anyone that contributed in the creation of this environment.
We should make one question clear: Was this an attack against Hrant Dink as well as Turkey as was stated by various officials including the Prime Minister? Or was it an attack by Turkey against Hrant Dink on behalf of democracy and freedom of speech?

“We should judge the darkness that turns a baby into a murderer,” Rakel Dink

[email protected]

[Joseph]

Dink was only one man...

Think about Turk diplomats murdered by you.
believe the juctice of God

How about 3 million innocent Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Chaldeans and Nestorians?