With a decision today to give life in prison for one of the several suspects in the 2007 murder of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink, an Istanbul court brought the drawn-out and controversial case to a close, but offered little closure to Dink's family and supporters and found itself facing strong criticism over its verdict.
Dink, the outspoken editor of the Armenian-Turkish weekly Agos newspaper, was gunned down in front of the paper's Istanbul offices on Jan. 20, 2007. His assassin, a 17-year-old named Ogun Samast, was sentenced (as a minor) to 22 years in jail in July. But the sentencing of Samast still left open the question of what role did the 19 other people arrested in the case play in the murder and, more importantly, what was the involvement of certain elements of the police and other state bodies in the killing?
Today's verdict did little to answer those questions. Despite fairly strong evidence indicating there was an organized plot with links to the police, all 19 were acquitted of being part of a conspiracy (or a "terrorist organization," as the indictment put it) to kill Dink and only one of them convicted for instigating the murder. As the New York Times reports, the verdict was swiftly criticized by Dink's lawyers and other observers:
Gokceada (also known as Imroz) is a large Turkish island in the northern Aegean that, until recent decades, was predominantly Greek. Although it was not part of the 1923 population exchange between Turkey and Greece, Gokceada's Greek population has dwindled to almost nothing as its original residents left due to a combination of political, economic and social factors.
In recent years, Greek life on the island -- the birthplace of Bartholomew I, the current Orthodox Patriarch -- has seen something of a small revival, thanks mostly to the presence of former residents who have returned to the island to retire or spend their summers. But the island's Greek community has now received an interesting boost from the Turkish government, which has given permission for a Greek primary to be reopened on the island. From a Cihan news service report:
The Ministry of Education has given permission to the Greek community to open a primary school on Gökçeada (Imbros), an island in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Çanakkale province.
Laki Vingas, elected representative of non-Muslim foundations at the Council of the General Assembly of the Directorate General for Foundations (VGM), was quoted in the Milliyet daily on Thursday as saying that the ministry gave permission verbally and that the Greeks of Gökçeada can start the process of opening a Greek school on the island.
Turkey's Greek schools are on the verge of closure because the Greek community's population is close to the point of extinction. There are estimated to be only 180-200 Turkish citizens of Greek origin on Gökçeada, and the number of Greek students expected to attend a Greek school on the island is expected to be low. But Vingas said that even if there are 10 students, the initiative would be important because it gives hopes for the future of the Greek community in Turkey.
Despite facing mounting domestic and international criticism, an Istanbul court today decided to keep in jail two leading journalists who are on trial for allegedly being part of a plot to topple the Turkish government. The journalists, Nedim Sener and Ahmet Sik, have been in jail for almost a year on charges that many believe to be fabricated in order to silence the two muckrakers. Some background from a good piece in today's New York Times about the trial and the growing threats to press freedom in Turkey:
A year ago, the journalist Nedim Sener was investigating a murky terrorist network that prosecutors maintain was plotting to overthrow Turkey’s Muslim-inspired government. Today, Mr. Sener stands accused of being part of that plot, jailed in what human rights groups call a political purge of the governing party’s critics.
Mr. Sener, who has spent nearly 20 years exposing government corruption, is among 13 defendants who appeared in state court this week at the imposing Palace of Justice in Istanbul on a variety of charges related to abetting a terrorist organization.
The other defendants include the editors of a staunchly secular Web site critical of the government and Ahmet Sik, a journalist who has written that an Islamic movement associated with Fethullah Gulen, a reclusive cleric living in Pennsylvania, has infiltrated Turkey’s security forces....
Without a doubt, one of the major changes in Turkey in recent years has been the willingness of the state and of a growing segment of Turkish society to confront some of the dark chapters in the country's modern history. The way this is being done might be flawed (look at this previous post about Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's politically-charged apology for a 1930's mass killing in eastern Turkey), but the significance of what were once taboo subjects now being openly discussed should not be overlooked.
That said, the subject of how to confront the past remains a very loaded one that frequently feeds -- rather than heals -- Turkey's political divisions. A good illustration of this is an excellent Foreign Policy story by Jenna Krajeski about the efforts by activists in Southeast Turkey's Diyarbakir to turn a notorious local prison into a museum dedicated to chronicling the abuses committed by the Turkish state against Kurds in the 1980's and 90's.
Questions about just how to deal with recent dark chapters of Turkish history are also likely to come up now that a prosecutor in Ankara has issued an indictment for the last two surviving members of the military junta responsible for Turkey's 1980 coup. The two, Kenan Evren, 94, and Tahsin Sahinkaya, could spend the rest of their lives in prison if convicted.
The killing last Wednesday of 35 Kurdish villagers in a botched Turkish airstrike against what were thought to be Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants has, naturally, only further increased political tensions in Turkey and ushered in a new round in the ongoing war of words between the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP).
Speaking to the AKP's parliamentary delegation today, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan angrily accused the BDP of "abusing" the event, which took place near the Iraqi border in Southeast Turkey. From Today's Zaman:
In an angry speech delivered at his party's parliamentary group meeting on Tuesday, Erdoğan said: “Whoever makes the issue an ethnic one by saying 35 Kurds were killed, they are trampling all kinds of humanitarian values. … We approach this incident as 35 people losing their lives in Uludere. We regard this issue as 35 citizens, 35 brothers who lost their lives. But they [the BDP] are making the issue an ethnic one. …. Those who classify the deaths as Kurdish and Turkish are following the path of the devil.”
Kurdish politicians, in turn, accused Erdogan of lashing out at the BDP in order to deflect attention away from the details of what happened on the border. “I was ashamed to be human as I listened to the prime minister's speech,” BDP leader Selahattin Demirtas told his own parliamentary group today.
Sweeps and large-scale arrests of people accused of being members of the Union of Kurdistan Communities (KCK), a pro-Kurdish group that Turkish authorities accuse of being a front for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), have become a commonplace event in Turkey over the last few years. But while the original targets of KCK-related arrests were mostly pro-Kurdish politicians, recent sweeps in the case have netted a wider assortment of suspects, including academics and writers (see this previous post).
In yet another round of mass arrests, Turkish authorities today detained what appear to be about 25 journalists, many of them working for pro-Kurdish media outlets, but apparantly also a well-known photographer who works for AFP. As the official Anadolu Agency put it, the raids were directed against the "press and propaganda" wing of the KCK. (More details via CNN, here.)
The arrests again raise the question of how Turkey's expansive terrorism laws are being used and if they're allowing the authorities to detain suspects for reasons that have very little to do with terrorism. Human Rights Watch's Turkey researcher, Emma Sinclair-Webb, raised this issue in an op-ed that ran in the Los Angeles Times yesterday. From her piece:
In a recent post, I took a look at the interesting story behind the presence of NATO nuclear bombs at Turkey's Incirlik airbase and how they fit into Ankara's strategic and security calculations. Those interested in diving deeper into the question of Turkey's nuclear policy might want to take a look at a new report released today by the Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies (EDAM), an Istanbul-based think tank. The takes a comprehensive look at Turkey's nuclear policy, from its current plans to start producing nuclear energy to its position on regional non-proliferation.
From the paper's executive summary of Turkey's non proliferation and nuclear diplomacy policies:
History has shown that states willing to commit resources and time can overcome the technical obstacles and successfully develop first generation nuclear weapons. However, most nuclear-capable states have chosen to remain non-nuclear. The decision to pursue nuclear weapons is rooted in technical capability combined with decision maker intent. At the moment, policy makers worry that an Iranian nuclear weapon will force its neighbors to explore the nuclear option. The oft-repeated argument claims that an Iranian nuclear weapon will lead to a regional arms race. Turkey, along with Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are the countries most often cited as the countries most likely to develop indigenous nuclear capabilities to counter Iran.
While many countries in the world have been swept up in the growing Occupy movement, Turkey has remained Occupy-free. Until now, that is. As Hurriyet reports, a group of students at Istabul's Bogazici University have started their own Occupy-style sit in in order to protest rising prices and gentrification around their campus. The site of their occupation? A new Starbucks -- until recently a hair salon -- near the University. From Hurriyet's report:
For three days more than 50 students have been occupying a Boğaziçi University campus Starbucks to protest campus food prices. The occupation follows a student march protesting the same.
Students brought their own coffee, tea, sandwiches and even carpets to Starbucks. The staff at the coffee shop is still on duty and serving free coffee to customers, but not protesters, during the occupation.
“Our goal is to draw attention to the big picture, which is about our campus life. It is surrounded by expensive stores, and day by day we are turning into consumers,” Yıldız Tar, a student of the political sciences and international relations department, told the Hürriyet Daily News yesterday.
Students emphasized the low quality of university restaurants. “We feel obligated to go to fancy cafes, but it is not what we need. Starbucks is symbolic,” Tar said.
A rare cooperative effort by the major parties in Turkey's parliament to amend a new law on football/soccer match fixing has been met by an equally rare veto by the country's president, leading to a vocal debate about the law and the intentions behind the vetoed legislative actions. The background to the story, from Hurriyet:
President Gül’s veto on a law reducing penalties for match fixers has driven a wedge between himself and Parliament while also dividing MPs of ruling party
A heated debate over an ongoing rigging scandal has engulfed Turkish politics with rifts beginning to emerge between the president and Parliament and within the ruling party on a law reducing penalties for match fixers.
President Abdullah Gül yesterday accused Parliament of not sufficiently working on the bill and strongly defended his veto on the law, which would have negated an earlier regulation stipulating harsh punishments against those who corrupt Turkish football. “I have realized an imbalance between the crime and the punishment. I have also seen that this law negated the deterrent effect [in match fixing],” Gül told reporters yesterday on the sidelines of a ceremony held at the Presidency.
Egemen Bagis, Turkey's Minister for European Union Affairs, has a penchant for making unpredictable or surprising statements. On Nov. 30, during a talk in Brussels, Bagis dropped another bombshell: opponents of the Turkish government managed to surreptitiously record Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's bedroom conversations. From a Dogan News Agency report in Hurriyet:
Private conversations between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his wife in their bedroom were secretly recorded, Turkish EU Minister Egemen Bağış has said.
“Unfortunately, even this country’s prime minister’s personal conversations with his spouse in their own bedroom have been recorded. This is not a simple affair that could be regarded as the freedom of press,” Bağış said at the European Union Press Club in Brussels on Nov. 30.
Speaking in relation to ongoing criticism about the arrest of journalists in Turkey, the minister said no one in the country had been arrested due to their journalistic activities and added that those currently in prison had been incarcerated for their ties to outlawed groups or other groups that sought to overthrow the government via illegal means.
The news should actually not be very surprising. Bugging, wiretapping and video surveillance have become an integral part of the Turkish political, legal and media landscape over the last few years. In fact, in a 2009 In a television interview, Erdogan said he was concerned about his phone being tapped. “What do you think? Of course,” Erdogan answered his interviewer.
“Therefore I watch what I say over the phone. I'm not comfortable speaking over the phone,” Erdogan told his interviewer on Turkey's private NTV news network.
