Ever since Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was murdered in front of his office on 19 January 2007, lawyers for his family have tried to get to the bottom of the organisation behind the murder. It is widely believed that the young men on trial for the murder are only the front men.

The recent investigation into the ultranationalist Ergenekon gang, said to have planned a military coup against the government and to have been involved in other illegal activities, points to connections between the Dink murder and the illegal organisation.

"A great opportunity" 

Fethiye Cetin, one of the Dink family lawyers and joint attorney in the main murder trial in Istanbul, gave an interview in the Taraf newspaper on 31     March, in which she said:

“There are many connections between Ergenekon and the Hrant Dink murder. Using the statements of the two gendarmerie officers (who have said that their superiors in Trabzon knew of the plans to kill Dink) we can get at the police and gendarmerie wing which is still working for Ergenekon. This is a great opportunity.”

Cetin: "Colonel is part of the organised murder"

The Trabzon gendarmerie superior, the then province gendarmerie commander Colonel Ali Öz will be questioned by the Parliamentary Human Rights Sub-Commission today (2 April) because of the accusations.

Cetin said, “The Colonel’s crime is not simple negligence. This colonel was part of an organised murder in some way.”

A suspected member of the Ergenekon gang who has been arrested, Assistant Professor Emin Gürses, said, “I knew that Dink would be killed three months before and told the police and intelligence service about it.” Cetin says that the lawyers will request that he be heard in the murder trial hearing.

Hayal's "important contacts" 

She added that the prosecutor and lawyers were still not being given all the evidence in the murder trial. For instance, murder suspect Yasin Hayal had been monitored by the Trabzon police ever since his involvement in the bombing of a McDonald’s there. When the Istanbul 14th Heavy Penal Court demanded the documents relating to the monitoring, one part of the document had been covered. When the full document was finally sent, it showed that Yasin Hayal had “made important contacts” in prison when arrested in the case.

Cetin says that Hayal is said to have met Veli Kücük, a retired army general and main suspect in the Ergenekon case, as well as Levent Temiz, the president of the ultranationalist “Idealist Hearth” movement.

"Time for Istanbul police to come clean" 

The lawyer argued that the Turkish Armed Forces have begun a process of getting rid of some of the Ergenekon members in its ranks.

“The Trabzon police has closed the case, but the investigation into the Istanbul police continues. In order to start a cleaning up like in the gendarmerie, Istanbul Chief of Police Celalettin Cerrah and Police Intelligence Chief Ramazan Akyürek need to be removed from office, so that junior officers can talk more freely.”

Deliberate racist incitement in Black Sea region 

Cetin also suggested that there was a deliberate policy of inciting racist hatred in the Black Sea region. Veli Kücük was on duty in Giresun, the province next to Trabzon. On retirement, he was replaced by gendarmerie Field Officer Dursun Ali Karaduman, who made headlines for declaring Hrant Dink a traitor at the funerals of fallen soldiers and reading a poem with the same message.

“Kücük and some generals incited a fear of a Pontus Greek revivalist movement in the Black Sea region (i.e. claiming that Greek Christians were trying to reclaim the area). There are no efforts to find out what happened in the murder of Priest Santoro in Trabzon. Contradictory statements of the murder suspect about where he got the gun from where not even researched. No one is taking responsibility for that trial.”

“With the statement of the gendarmerie officers, there is a new dimension in the Ergenekon case and the operation is reaching members of the security forces who are still in office. This is a very important opportunity. With the Dink trial, those Ergenekon members still in office can be reached.”(EÖ/GG/AG)