Presidential body to shed light on Dink murder case

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, the editor-in-chief of weekly Agos, was commemorated on Jan 19 2012, the fifth anniversary of his murder. More than 30,000 people gathered together to mark the day and held a protest in Istanbul.

The State Audit Board (DDK) of the Turkish Presidency has determined that certain documents went missing while others were tampered with in the case of Hrant Dink, the Turkish-Armenian journalist murdered in 2007 in front of his newspaper office in Istanbul.

The DDK will be bringing up a number of contentious issues in an upcoming report, including a notice provided to the gendarmerie by instigator Yasin Hayal’s brother-in-law, Coşkun İğci, in July 2006, which indicated that Hayal would make an attempt on Dink’s life.

Gendarmerie officials, however, had claimed the intelligence in question was only provided to them after Dink’s assassination.

Claims
Another claim that is expected to make its way into the report concerns an SMS message sent by Tuncay Uzundal to Erhan Tuncel, which was also brought up in court by Prosecutor Hikmet Üsta, allegedly indicating that Hayal was asking for 7.65 mm caliber shells.

The SMS message was altered at the police headquarters in the Black Sea province of Trabzon and the part where Hayal was asking for shells was deleted, according to allegations.

An investigation may subsequently be launched against certain public servants once the report gets published, according to the daily Cumhuriyet.

Former claims were directed at former Istanbul Governor Muammer Güler as well as the Istanbul Police Department’s Intelligence Director Ahmet İlhan Güler.

Accordingly, the Trabzon chief of police sent a report to the Istanbul Police Department to warn of an assassination against Dink, but the intelligence head Ahmet İlhan Güler did not take it seriously. Attempts to investigate Güler after the murder have been blocked.

The DDK’s report will also include sections about other administrative proceedings pertaining to the trial, as well as a series of objections that were raised by Turkey’s Telecommunications Directorate (TİB) regarding phone and camera records from the crime scene.

Meanwhile, Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputy leader Hüseyin Çelik said Dink was the victim of a murder but the real target was the AKP.

“Dink was the victim of the murder, he was bait, but the real target was the AKP. The mindset that executed Sept. 6 to 7 is the same mindset that organized the Dink murder. They wanted to create chaos in Turkey. They wanted to damage the political stability of Turkey,” Çelik said at a press meeting Jan. 27.