Full stop still pending in Dink’s killer judgement

PanARMENIAN.Net - The trial lasted four years, accumulating new details, which reveal that Samast was only the final segment in this chain, the one who only pulled the trigger. At the beginning of the trial the Turkish nationalist was a minor, but two years later he was declared of age at the time of the crime and was tried as an adult. And the verdict was brought in by medical experts. But later on the court once again decided that Ogun Samast was a minor, and this conditioned the mild sentence for premeditated murder.

Let us remind that Ogun Samast was arrested on the day following the murder and initially admitted his guilt. At the first questioning he wrote that he had decided to kill the journalist after his publications on the Armenian Genocide. However, in his last plea in the court Samast repented his crime and asked for pardon. He also said he was unaware that his victim was a journalist who wrote on the topic forbidden in Turkey.

Terrorist ultra-nationalist organization “Ergenekon” has some relation to Dink's murder and investigation on it still continues. Law enforcement bodies knew about the impending murder but took no measures to protect Dink. Moreover, ultra-nationalists also threatened Patriarch Mesrob Mutafyan of Constantinople, who fell ill due to constant stress and was unable to perform the duties of a spiritual leader of the Armenian community in Istanbul. Also because of these threats Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk forcedly left Turkey. In this regard, it must be noted that Turkey has not changed for the past 100 years: all the same persecution of intellectuals, assassinations and terror. And no matter how often Prime Minister Erdogan says that his country is more inclined to Europe rather than to the East, in reality today’s Turkey is the same medieval Islamic despotic country. And there is no guarantee that tomorrow yet another journalist will not fall victim to the deep state, the actual governor of the country. It is no accident that so far there are 57 journalists jailed in Turkey. Once in a while they are released, but Article 301 of the Turkish Criminal Code on “denigration of Turkishness” has not been withdrawn yet. Most likely it will always remain, as Ankara will always have problems with ethnic minorities: first, these were the Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks, now they are the Kurds and Alevi, then nationalists will think of yet another “enemy to the nation”. Nevertheless, we must admit that the sentence passed on Ogun Samast is rather severe, given the fact that he actually killed a faithless giaour, for which Muslims are believed to “pave” a straight road to heaven.

Let us note that Fethiye Cetin, the lawyer for the Dink family, announced that the defense were satisfied with the court decision. Meanwhile, the trial against 20 suspects including Yasin Hayal and Erhan Tuncel, who are accused of instigating and organizing the murder, continues at the 14th High Criminal Court in İstanbul. They face a period of 18–24 years in prison in accordance with the articles of the Turkish Criminal Code: “Membership in a terrorist organization”, “Committing a murder”, “Illegal possession of firearms”, ​​“Production, keeping and use of explosives”, “Threat of physical reprisal”.

The full stop in this process is still pending: Turkish authorities were unable to find the courage to admit the darkest pages of their past. Recognition of the Armenian Genocide is necessary to the Turkish people most of all. But the fear to equate the party of Young Turks with the Khmer Rouge, the Hutu in Rwanda and the organizers of the Darfur genocide, makes this recognition dreadful, because a state erected on the bones of its subjects has no right to exist. And Armenians, alas, were subjects to the Ottoman Empire... And the fact that the Armenian Genocide in Turkey is a constant phenomenon can be confirmed by the murder of Hrant Dink and by the existence of the Armenian community balancing on a knife edge.