Epress.am News from Armenia
The family of Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink has appealed a decision by an Ankara prosecutor to dismiss proceedings regarding two members of the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) who allegedly “warned” Dink to be careful in his articles prior to his assassination in 2007, Today’s Zaman reports.
Lawyers Fethiye Çetin and Hasan Ürel submitted the petition on behalf of the family concerning the Ankara court’s Oct. 29 decision to the Sincan High Criminal Court on Tuesday.
In 2004, Dink published an article in Agos claiming that Sabiha Gökçen, the adopted daughter of the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and Turkey’s first female pilot, was an Armenian orphan.
The petition indicated that following the publication of Dink’s story the Hürriyet daily reprinted it saying that “Atatürk’s adopted daughter was an Armenian girl,” and then the General Staff issued harsh statements against those news stories.
The lawyers also pointed out Dink’s accounts and some facts:
“After being called to the İstanbul Governor’s Office, where two intelligence officers were present, Hrant Dink wrote about this meeting because he was being warned and felt that he was being targeted. When one of the two people, Özel Yılmaz, became a defendant in the Ergenekon case, it was revealed that the intelligence officials were high-level members of MİT. MİT admitted in a statement to the court three-and-a-half years after the murder that those who attended the meeting were intelligence officers.”
According to Dink’s account published in Agos, where he was editor-in-chief, on Jan. 12, 2007, MİT Marmara Regional Deputy Director Özel Yılmaz and Handan Selçuk summoned Dink to the İstanbul Governor’s Office and issued a warning, telling him to “be careful” about what he writes. The meeting took place on Feb. 4, 2004, shortly after Dink wrote the article about Gökçen. After Dink’s assassination in January 2007, one of the MİT agents who talked to him at the governor’s office that day was revealed to be Yılmaz, who is currently a suspect in the investigation into Ergenekon, a clandestine gang charged with plotting to overthrow the government which prosecutors said might also be responsible for Dink’s murder.
Lawyers for the Dink family also indicated that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had given permission in January of this year for the start of a probe into the MİT agents and that this is why the Ankara prosecutor had opened an investigation.
“The actions of the suspects are clear. If they performed their duties well, they would have prevented Hrant Dink’s murder, but they did not. Therefore, they are responsible for negligent homicide,” the lawyers stated, adding that it is not MİT officials’ area of responsibility to “warn” or “threaten” journalists because of their writings.
The court admitted the fact that the MİT officials’ actions were in line with “negligence and misconduct in office,” but since the statute of limitations had passed, the proceedings were dismissed; however, the lawyers said the date of the crime should have been Jan. 19, 2007, when Dink was assassinated, not 2004, when the meeting at the governor’s office took place.