{"id":148842,"date":"2011-12-15T13:37:09","date_gmt":"2011-12-15T09:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=148842"},"modified":"2011-12-15T13:37:09","modified_gmt":"2011-12-15T09:37:09","slug":"turkey-intelligence-officers-warned-dink-to-be-careful-family-appeals-prosecutor-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2011\/12\/15\/turkey-intelligence-officers-warned-dink-to-be-careful-family-appeals-prosecutor-decision.html","title":{"rendered":"Turkey Intelligence Officers ‘Warned’ Dink to be Careful: Family Appeals Prosecutor Decision"},"content":{"rendered":"

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 (M\u0130T) who allegedly \u201cwarned\u201d Dink to be careful in his articles prior to his assassination in 2007, Today’s Zaman<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/span> reports.<\/p>\n

Lawyers Fethiye \u00c7etin and Hasan \u00dcrel submitted the petition on behalf of the family concerning the Ankara court’s Oct. 29 decision to the Sincan High Criminal Court on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

In 2004, Dink published an article in Agos claiming that Sabiha G\u00f6k\u00e7en, the adopted daughter of the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atat\u00fcrk, and Turkey’s first female pilot, was an Armenian orphan.<\/p>\n

The petition indicated that following the publication of Dink’s story the H\u00fcrriyet daily reprinted it saying that \u201cAtat\u00fcrk’s adopted daughter was an Armenian girl,\u201d and then the General Staff issued harsh statements against those news stories.<\/p>\n

The lawyers also pointed out Dink’s accounts and some facts:<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter being called to the \u0130stanbul 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, \u00d6zel Y\u0131lmaz, became a defendant in the Ergenekon case, it was revealed that the intelligence officials were high-level members of M\u0130T. M\u0130T admitted in a statement to the court three-and-a-half years after the murder that those who attended the meeting were intelligence officers.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Dink’s account published in Agos, where he was editor-in-chief, on Jan. 12, 2007, M\u0130T Marmara Regional Deputy Director \u00d6zel Y\u0131lmaz and Handan Sel\u00e7uk summoned Dink to the \u0130stanbul Governor’s Office and issued a warning, telling him to \u201cbe careful\u201d about what he writes. The meeting took place on Feb. 4, 2004, shortly after Dink wrote the article about G\u00f6k\u00e7en. After Dink’s assassination in January 2007, one of the M\u0130T agents who talked to him at the governor’s office that day was revealed to be Y\u0131lmaz, 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.<\/p>\n

Lawyers for the Dink family also indicated that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan had given permission in January of this year for the start of a probe into the M\u0130T agents and that this is why the Ankara prosecutor had opened an investigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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,\u201d the lawyers stated, adding that it is not M\u0130T officials’ area of responsibility to \u201cwarn\u201d or \u201cthreaten\u201d journalists because of their writings.<\/p>\n

The court admitted the fact that the M\u0130T officials’ actions were in line with \u201cnegligence and misconduct in office,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“They are responsible for negligent homicide,\u201d the lawyers stated, adding that it is not M\u0130T officials’ area of responsibility to \u201cwarn\u201d or \u201cthreaten\u201d journalists…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":126985,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[10910,35918,10425,10429,11817,10222],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148842"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}