A CONTRACT KILLING

Experts think that the assassination of Turkish journalist of Armenian descent Hrant Dink, the editor of the Istanbul-based Armenian newspaper Agos, will long be in the focus of attention of politicians, journalists and, most likely, of the Turkish law-enforcement agencies. The late journalist was too well-known and even "promoted" an individual.

Strictly speaking, newspapers of small ethnic communities rarely have a serious impact on the political situation in their country. However, in his editorials in Agos, Dink repeatedly said that "the adoption of European standards will help Turks assess the tragedy that the Armenians experienced in 1915-17". At the same time, he condemned Armenian radicalism which, he believed, also prevented the establishment of neighbourly relations between the two countries. For his beliefs, in October 2005 he was found guilty of the violation of Article 301 of Turkey's Criminal Code (insult of the nation) and given a six-month suspended sentence. Hrant Dink was convicted for remarks he made three years before the trial. He did no like Turkish schoolchildren singing every morning the national anthem which contains lines about one's pride for belonging to "a heroic race". Afterwards, he demanded in his articles that the annihilation of 1.5m Armenians in northern Anatolia during WWI be recognized as "genocide".

The Turkish authorities always stress that mutinies by Armenian deserters, war, famine, diseases, and clashes between Armenians and the Turkish army indeed claimed numerous lives on both sides. They stress that all this was accompanied by horrible massacres of the Muslim population, and there were greater losses among Turks than among Armenians, and the then Turkish authorities were not pursuing a deliberate policy of exterminating Armenians.

The situation became at least equivocal when neither Armenia nor European countries backed Turkey's proposal to set up a joint commission of historians who would "calmly and without bias study the existing factual materials". Finally, when the lower chamber of the French parliament passed a bill criminalizing the denial of the "Armenian genocide", it was Hrant Dink who promised to go to France and say right at the airport that there had been no "genocide" just in order to see who would be the first to arrest him.

However, it is known that Dink received threats via e-mail. In those messages, he was called a "traitor". It is not known who sent them. In an editorial published on 12 January 2007, Dink said that he feared for his life. "Ministers, do you know what it is like when you and your family are subjected to constant insults and threats? I have thought of emigrating many times, but this is not an option for me. I know that the year 2007 will be even harder than the past year. I am tired and scared like a street pigeon driven into a net. But I do believe that in my country they do not kill pigeons," he said in the editorial. 

However, few took those threats seriously. Everyone remembered about messages e-mailed to Dink and who said what in private conversations in provincial Trabzon, a town very popular with Russian shoppers, when Dink was killed on 19 January. A suspect, 17-year-old Ogun Samast from Trabzon, was arrested the next day. He said that he had taken revenge on the journalist who insulted the Turkish nation.

Eye-witnesses and Dink's colleagues said that a young man came to the editorial office in the morning and asked for a meeting with the editor-in-chief. It was not a visit day and the man was told to come another day. He left, but stayed outside the office, just on the other side of the street. A few hours later, journalists of Agos saw him asking for a meeting with Dink again and claiming that he had something important to tell him. When the editor came out to the street, the man shot him several times and made off. The murderer was videoed by CCTV cameras which facilitated his early detention. The tapes were broadcast on national TV channels on the same day. Ogun Samast was recognized by his father and the police arrested him at a bus station in Samsun, a town on Turkey's Black Sea coast, late on the night of 20 January. The man was on his way home from Istanbul. He was found to be in possession of a gun and the clothes that he wore on the day of the murder. The 17-year-old confessed to the crime during the very first police interrogation.

According to unverified reports, there are six more suspects in the Dink murder case. One of them is Yasin Hayal who served 11 months in jail for a terror attack on a McDonald's restaurant in Trabzon in 2004.

Dink's funeral turned into a demonstration, and not only ethnic Armenians paid tribute to him. Immediately after the assassination, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a televised address to the nation: "The bullets that killed Dink were shot at everyone of us. This murder is an insult to the Turkish nation. The criminals will soon be found and punished." The prime minister took the investigation under his personal control. The law-enforcement agencies said it was a matter of honour to find Dink's murderer. 

The main keynote of assessments was simple - the assassination was a provocation. Incidentally, this is how Azerbaijani journalists described the murder, too. The journalist's murder was too apropos, too timely. Only a lazy person in Armenia did not say that the recent election to the US Congress resulted in a new distribution of forces and the adoption of a resolution on "the Armenian genocide" is now very likely. At least a strange situation has developed concerning Turkey joining the EU, which is not Turkey's fault. France has finally passed that very scandalous bill criminalizing the denial of the genocide. Against this background, the killing of the Turkish journalist of Armenian descent who had already been tried for insulting the nation was a gift which Armenian propagandists could not even dream of. 

Analysts say that the fact that Ogun Samast pulled the trigger may mean nothing. They recall the killing of Abdi Ipekci, the editor of Milliyet newspaper, on the eve of the 1980 coup - Ipekci was killed by the KGB which skillfully put the investigation on the "nationalistic" track.

In any case, Armenia immediately tried to derive political benefits from the murder. Dink's widow, Rakel, asked those attending the funeral to refrain from chanting political slogans and statements. However, to all appearances, these words were not heard in Yerevan. Here they are trying to derive very specific political benefits from Hrant Dink's death, presenting the incident like a continuation of "the Armenian genocide". The Armenian parliament speaker said: "now Turkey should not even dream about EU membership", but he forgot that few things depend on Armenia in this issue. The Union of Writers of Armenia and the Yerevan mayor's office organized a march to the memorial to the victims of the genocide. Those attending were carrying pictures of Dink. Azg newspaper gave a scandalous headline to a report on the event - "The year 1915 continues. For how long?" The Dashnak-sponsored newspaper Yerkir reported on rallies held by Armenian and Kurdish organizations in Sweden under the headline "Hrant Dink was killed by the same bloody hand that had killed millions of his ancestors."

However, another thing is clear. The reaction of the Turkish public and authorities to Dink's murder does not give grounds for such scandalous assessments. Editorials in Turkish papers, journalists' and leading political figures' participation in Dink's funeral and, finally, the fact that the murderer was turned in to the police by his own father - all of this gives one quite a lot of information to think.

Finally, the killing of Hrant Dinks caused a series of resignations in the Turkish power-wielding agencies. The governor of Istanbul and the Istanbul security chief were sacked. Ahmet Ilhan Guler, head of the Istanbul police intelligence department, was sacked a few days later. Eleven months before the killing, the police received a tip-off from Trabzon about a crime being planned. However, the head of the intelligence department ignored the report and did not inform his chief, Sabah newspaper said. 

It becomes obvious that the political consequences of Hrant Dink's murder may be ambiguous. The reason is that the reaction from the Turkish establishment and the public was very clear. In any case, now even pro-Armenian authors, such as Lea Kirstein from Die Tseit, are compelled to state: "The Turkish community in Europe and in Turkey mourns, saying that they are shocked by this 'revolting' crime committed against freedom of speech. It is easy to express pain in connection with Dink's murder. The media make statements, mourning wakes and protest rallies are held and copies of pictures of Dink are distributed. These photos on shirts and suits symbolize people's unity." Armenian political expert Levon Melik-Shakhnazaryan says: "After the killing of Hrant Dink and his funeral in Istanbul that was attended by tens of thousands, many people in the world started saying that the Turks have changed and become more democratic and tolerant. Such statements can be heard in Armenia too." 

It seems that following Turkey's reaction to Dink's murder, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep old myths "afloat".