Turkey
Verdicts in journalist’s assassination prompt mass protestsPosted Jan 26 2012
Demonstrators in several Turkish cities last week protested the conclusion of a trial involving the 2007 murder of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, the BBC reported.
Three people were convicted last week of crimes related to the killing, and the gunman was sentenced in July. But the court dismissed allegations that Dink’s death was part of an intragovernmental conspiracy, according to a Jan. 17 article by The New York Times.
People protested the convictions because of widespread beliefs that the case was not fully investigated and that illegal internal networks exist in the Turkish government, according to a Jan. 19 article.
The protests coincided with the fifth anniversary of Dink’s death. In Istanbul at least 20,000 people marched, according to the BBC. Many displayed signs that read, “We are all Hrant, we are all Armenian.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that Dink, a Turkish citizen, attracted negative attention from “radical nationalists” because he spoke out about the Ottoman massacre of Armenians in 1915 and called it a genocide.
Fethiye Cetin, a lawyer representing the Dink family, said in the Jan. 17 article that the trial’s outcome evidenced “the ongoing state tradition of political murders and its alienation of some citizens as the enemy.”
Nina Ognianova, program coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists Europe and Central Asia, expressed similar sentiments.
“Justice for our colleague Hrant Dink will not be achieved until the commissioners of his slaying … are tried and punished to the full extent of the law,” Ognianova said.
The New York Times reported that prosecutors appealed Thursday.