Basic questions still unanswered during Dink trial’s 11th hearing

Essential issues were again left unaddressed at the 11th hearing on 12 October in the trial of the newspaper editor Hrant Dink’s alleged killers before an Istanbul court. A Turkish journalist of Armenian origin, Dink was gunned down outside his newspaper in Istanbul on 19 January 2007. “In hearing after hearing, the same fundamental questions remain, including the existence of a political will at the highest level to expose the truth in a case whose ramifications could turn it into a major government scandal,” Reporters Without Borders said. “But one thing is now clearly established, namely the danger that the ultranationalist discourse and ideology of hate pose to Turkish society in its entirety. This danger has clearly not gone away.” The press freedom organisation added: “This is also evidenced by the fact that in the past four years, some 200 Turkish intellectuals, journalists, publishers and dissidents have been tried under criminal code article 301 on charges of humiliating Turkish identity or insulting state institutions, meaning the army, police and judicial system.” For the first time since the start of the trial in July 2007, the alleged murder weapon was displayed in court. Judge Erkan Canak showed it to the defendants. Two of them, Ogün Samast, the youth who has confessed to shooting Dink, and Yasin Hayal, who allegedly supplied him with the gun, said they recognised it. During the hearing, lawyers representing the Dink family reiterated their concern about the murkier aspects of the case. They asked for the case to be linked to two other ongoing investigations and said evidence from these two other investigations should be shared with the Dink trial. One is the investigation into the ultranationalist conspiracy known as Ergenekon, and the other is the investigation into the 2007 murder of three protestant missionaries in the eastern city of Malatya. One of the Dink family lawyers, Fethiye Çetin, asked for the court to be given the testimony of one of the Ergenekon defendants, Sevgi Erenerol, a young woman who is the spokesperson of the (ultranationalist) Turkish Orthodox Church. Erenerol, who supported the article 301 prosecutions brought against Dink, mentioned meetings with senior armed forces personnel at which the presence of protestant missionaries in Turkey was referred to as a “danger.” The prosecutors in charge of the Ergenekon case are already supposed to provide Judge Canak with documents concerning another of the defendants, Durmus Ali Özoglu, whose statements tend to confirm the existence of a plan to “psychologically destabilise” Turkey. It is for investigating the Ergenekon conspiracy and the failure of the security forces to prevent Dink’s murder that Nedim Sener, a journalist with the daily Milliyet, is being prosecuted over an article published in February and a book entitled “The Dink murder and intelligence agency lies.” He is facing a possible 32-year jail sentence (more than the 20-year terms that Dink’s alleged murderers could get) on charges of publishing confidential information, trying to pervert the course of justice, insulting a police officer and three senior intelligence officers and exposing the intelligence officers to “attacks by terrorist organisations.” The Dink family lawyers also insisted during this hearing on the need to continue efforts to identify all the people involved in the Dink murder. In particular, they called for an investigation into the statements made to a special parliamentary commission by the current head of intelligence in Ankara, Ramazan Akyürek, who used to be police chief in Trabzon, the city where most of the defendants come from. Akyürek told the commission he had been aware of a plan to kill Dink. During this hearing, the US software and Internet company Microsoft was asked to provide the court with transcripts of the MSN Messenger conversations of one of the defendants, Erhan Tuncel, who was a Trabzon police informer. Several international observers attended the hearing, including Vincent Nioré, Alexandre Couyoumdjian and Mathieu Brochier, three Paris bar association lawyers who are following the trial at the behest of bar president Christian Charrière-Bournazel. It was the third consecutive hearing they have attended. They said their Paris bar association mandate to observe the trial and support the Dink family and its lawyers has been extended until 2011. In response to a journalist’s question, they said they have not been received by the head of the Istanbul bar association, Muammer Aydin, who has said in the past that he is not happy with the interest the Paris bar association is taking in the trial as it “means that too much importance is being attached to Hrant Dink’s Armenian identity.” The observers also included European Parliament member Hélène Flautre, who is joint chairperson of the Turkey-EU mixed commission, Ali Yurttagül, an adviser to the European Greens, Eugene Schoulgin, international secretary of International PEN, and two representatives of Norwegian PEN, Lin Stensrud and Trine Kleven.