By Mark Dovich
Ogün Samast, the man convicted of killing the prominent Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, was released on parole Wednesday after spending 16 years and 10 months in prison in Turkey.
Samast’s release for “good behavior” has prompted a fresh outpouring of grief and rage in Armenian communities around the world and among Turkey’s beleaguered opposition.
Özgür Özel, the head of Turkey’s main opposition party, decried the news, writing on X, formerly Twitter, that “anyone who talks about justice after this is truly heartless.”
A number of human rights organizations, journalists’ unions, and Armenian and Kurdish groups in Turkey have also condemned Samast’s release. The problem is not just that the killer has been released, but more importantly, as the Hrant Dink family, the foundation and many others have noted, the true planning and actual organizers have not been held responsible, even though years of investigations have pointed to high-level government collaboration.
In an editorial Thursday, Agos, the bilingual Armenian-Turkish newspaper that Dink founded, warned that a “dark atmosphere similar” to the one that led to Dink’s murder “still prevails in our country.”
The Armenian government has so far not commented publicly on the matter.
What’s the background?
Samast, 17 years old, gunned down Dink in broad daylight in Istanbul in 2007, sparking a massive wave of protests across Turkey and drawing widespread international condemnation.
Samast was sentenced to life in prison, but the term was later reduced to just under 23 years as he was a minor at the time of Dink’s slaying.
Before his murder, Dink repeatedly received death threats from Turkish ultranationalists and was also prosecuted three times for “denigrating Turkishness” under Turkey’s controversial Article 301.
Staff at the Hrant Dink Foundation, established a year after Dink’s assassination, continue to receive death threats for their work promoting democracy and human rights in Turkey and advocating for Armenians and other minority groups in the country.
Also watch: Hrant Dink: An Assassination of National Consensus
What’s the context?
Samast’s release comes even as leading pro-democracy politicians and human rights activists in Turkey remain behind bars — a point made by a number of observers, including Khatchig Mouradian of New York’s Columbia University.
“Ogün Samast walks free, and Osman Kavala remains in prison,” Mouradian told the Al-Monitor news site, referencing one of Turkey’s leading proponents of respect and collaboration within Turkish society, with all peoples, including Armenians and neighboring Armenia.
Kavala was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole last year in connection with massive anti-government protests that rocked Turkey in 2013.
He was a close friend of Dink’s.
Other artists, journalists and civil rights activists, friends and collaborators of Kavala, also remain imprisoned, including filmmaker Cigdem Mater who was the co-founder and co-president of the Armenia-Turkey Cinema Platform.
What’s the latest with Armenia-Turkey normalization?
Relations between Armenia and Turkey remain extremely tense. Atlhough Turkey recognized Armenia’s independence very soon after the Soviet collapse, there are still no diplomatic relations
The Armenia-Turkey border, which stretches for hundreds of miles, was closed in 1993 by Turkey, during the first Karabakh war, in support of its ally Azerbaijan, and thus creating a devastating economic blockade on Yerevan.
The 2020 war in and around Nagorno-Karabakhsaw Armenia suffer a disastrous military defeat and eventually led to the near-total ethnic cleansing of Armenians from the region this September. Turkey has had a crucial role in this most recent phase of the struggle.
Nonetheless, over these three decades, and even just last year, Armenia has remained open to the possibility of opening the border with Turkey. So far, there have been no public signs of any movement in that direction.
Also watch: Possible Turkish border reopening causes angst in Armenia’s border villages
