Hrant Dink assassination day, security footage
Concerns over a possible police cover-up regarding Hrant Dink’s murder have been persistent since the assassination of the prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist in Istanbul on January 19, 2007.
A week short of the nine year commemoration of the tragedy, new evidence has surfaced supporting the suspicion that the Turkish gendarmerie, in particular the Trabzon provincial command, not only knew of the planned murder but also supervised it.
Today’s Zaman reports that according to Internethaber online news, video footage has recently emerged showing six gendarmerie intelligence officers in front of the Agos newspaper building at the time of the murder. This footage supports the information disseminated by the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office stating that their own analysis of telephone signal traffic in the area, at the time of Hrant Dink’s assassination, detected signals received from telephones belonging to six gendarmerie.
Internethaber concludes that this can serve as solid evidence of police involvement in Hrant Dink’s assassination if “the prosecutor’s office verifies the six individuals as gendarmerie intelligence officers.”
In addition, Al Jazeera Turk reports that, only days before the assassination, two policemen from the Tabzon gendarmerie command lurked around Hrant Dink’s residence in the Bakirkoy district of Istanbul and confirmed from the doorman that the journalist indeed lived at the address.
Citing a number of sources within the police force, Al Jazeera Turk points out that what links the six officers at the crime scene and the two who visited Dink’s home days earlier is a lieutenant identified by the initials M.D.Telephone records show that M.D. has been constantly in touch with the both groups.
Agos, Istanbul
There is an ongoing indictment case against 26 public officials who are accused of negligence and misconduct of their duties in regards to Hrant Dink’s case. Prosecutor Gökalp Kökçü, who was assigned to the Dink case on December 2014, proposed the indictment case. After two rejections, it was finally accepted in December of 2015.
However, Agos reports that as part of the division of labor and working order for 2016, released by Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s office, Kökçü will no longer be dealing with the case.
Hrant Dink was assassinated in front of the Agos newspaper headcounters in Istanbul. He was the editor-in-chief and a founding member of the Turkish-Armenian bilingual newspaper, had written and spoken about the Armenian Genocide and was an outspoken advocate of human and minority rights in Turkey. Hrant Dink been prosecuted under article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code making it illegal to insult Turkey, the Turkish nation, or Turkish government institutions and had long endured threats by Turkish ultranationalists for his statements on Armenian identity and the Armenian Genocide.
A Turkish court ruled there was no conspiracy behind the assassination, and stated that the assassination was an ordinary killing. On January 16, 2012 Ogün Samast was convicted of Dink’s murder and sentenced to life imprisonment which was commuted to 22 years and 10 months in prison under Turkish juvenile law. Yasin Hayal was also found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Two other men were convicted of assisting him and they were each sentenced to 12 years and 6 months in prison.
