| | | | | ORHAN MİROĞLU
o.miroglu@todayszaman.com | ![]() |
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| | | The Supreme Court of Appeals has issued its verdict on the Hrant Dink case, which has attracted a great deal of attention in Turkey as well as the rest of the world: There is an organization involved; however, this is not the Ergenekon organization that the court prosecutor referred to in the legal opinion he submitted to the court panel. | |
The most recent verdict in the Hrant Dink case reminds us of the fate of the Susurluk case, which was opened in the aftermath of the Susurluk incident and which revealed the strong, intricate ties between politics, the state and the mafia and the crimes committed via this cooperation. The presiding judge in the Susurluk case, Sedat Karagül, was removed from his post and replaced by judge Metin Çetinbaş, who served as the defense lawyer of Ergenekon members after retiring as a judge.
Contrary to the general expectations, the case handled by Çetinbaş was treated as one of ordinary criminal activity rather than a case of organized crime. The members of the Susurluk gang were never interrogated or prosecuted for many of their offenses. Ayhan Çarkın, who confessed to being a member of this horrible organization and served as a hitman in that organization, made shocking statements and remarks last year; he is still in custody. He must have believed that his statements would shed some light on what happened in the past. However, members of the special forces who were arrested after his statements have been released. Çarkın is now the only defendant in the Susurluk investigation. In the most recent hearing of the trial, he denied his previous statements. I believe that nobody has the right to blame Çarkın for this. He took a huge risk, maintaining that he would make a contribution to the process that would shed light on past crimes. But this did not happen. He found himself to be the only defendant in a case involving many murder charges.
The decision in the Hrant Dink case will serve as a precedent for similar cases involving the many murder allegations that are currently under investigation.
If there was no organization involved in the Hrant Dink murder that sought to topple the government, make secret and bloody plans to seize power and to intimidate the people, and if a small gang involving just a few people killed Dink, then it is useless to look for an organization that played a role in the Zirve massacre, the ongoing JİTEM -- a secret, illegitimate military intelligence unit -- cases in Diyarbakır and the starting of a three-decade dirty war by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
And then maybe we should conclude that those who killed Kurdish writer Musa Anter, Batman deputy Mehmet Sincar and human rights activists Vedat Aydın and Uğur Mumcu were regular people like Ogün Samast , the convicted killer of Dink, who were unable to distinguish between good and evil.
The Supreme Court of Appeals' decision will serve as a model on how Turkey will confront its past and how the legal aspect of this confrontation will be concluded; it will disappoint those who are seeking justice.
I am afraid that some cases and investigations -- those in which only the hitmen and those who aided and abetted them are being prosecuted -- will be concluded with a reliance on this approach.
The connections of these criminal organizations to the state will never be exposed and the legal process will never be conclusive.
I do not think that this conclusion in the Hrant Dink case is attributable to a lack of prudence and wisdom on the part of the court alone. Unfortunately, there has never been sufficient public support or demand for the fair conclusion of these cases. The way those who took ownership of the case approached their cause was wrong; some of those who remembered Dink asked for freedom for the members of Ergenekon jailed in Silivri Prison.
Nobody asked who actually killed Dink at the ceremonies in which Hrant Dink was remembered. The only slogan at these ceremonies was this: Fascism strikes; the AKP protects.
Now it is time to ask this question to the chanters of these slogans: Which sort of fascism was it that killed Dink? |
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