Part of me wants to believe the Dink investigation is over, but in reality I think it has only begun.
An indictment which asked for a life sentence in solitary confinement for Erhan Tuncel and Yasin Hayal for “establishing and managing an armed terror network and soliciting murder” was rejected by the Istanbul 14th Penal Court a few days ago and Istanbul prosecutors Selim Berna Altay and Fikret Seçen are scrambling to fix things (source). The public prosecutors were also demanded that the court sentence Ogun Samast, the hit-man, to an imprisonment sentence going from 18 to 24 years. (source).
Let’s hope prosecutors get their act together fast…but in other news, the Istanbul-based Armenian Turkish newspaper started by Dink, AGOS, is still receiving international attention and London’s Independent newspaper just published an article on the unique publication–which has a circulation of 10,000 (25% of which is Armenian Turkish).
In the piece, Armenian Patriarch Mesrob Mutafyan of Istanbul, is quoted as saying:
“You should remember he was brought up in an orphanage,” says Patriarch Mesrob Mutafyan, the most senior Armenian cleric in Turkey, in reference to Dink’s 10 years growing up in an evangelical orphange after his parents had separated. “It turned him against the state, against the patriarch, against anyone.” (source)
I don’t know which is worse, that Mutafyan is so dismissive of Dink’s powerful ability to confront injustice big or small or his reduction of Dink’s activist tone to the stereotype of a bitter orphan.
Leave a Reply