In my previous articles I tried to explain how the Hürriyet daily and the deep state orchestrated a campaign that led to the opening of this case against him and his subsequent assassination.
When his sentence was upheld by the Court of Cassation, Dink lodged a case with the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), stating that his freedom of expression had been violated with this sentence he had received. He was killed while his case was pending with the ECtHR.
A few days ago we learned from the news coverage of the Vatan daily that the government just delivered its defense in this case as requested by the court. According to Vatan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, among other things, claimed that Dink’s sentence was in accordance with the law and in no violation of the European Convention on Human Rights because his words spread hatred. And to justify Dink’s punishment, the ministry cited the Kühnen v. Federal Republic of Germany in which the ECtHR justified the punishment of the neo-Nazi leader because his words spread hatred among people.
Vatan and a few other newspapers are now trying to confuse liberals and democrats who support this government. They want to say that these people support this government even though it equates Dink, whom they love very much, to Nazi leaders. If we forget these newspapers’ previous stance on Dink and if we look at the response of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in isolation, they seem to be quite right. However, the problem is much more complicated than it seems.
It was always embarrassing
The government’s defense before the ECtHR is extremely offensive and embarrassing. It has no respect for the dignity of the applicant. However, when we look at this problem from the narrow perspective that this newspaper is trying to provide us with, we cannot understand anything. What this unit of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did is just the latest in a very long tradition.
Turkey has always denied facts and never apologized for what it did. Turkey’s position before the ECtHR has always been quite an extraordinary one. An exceptional procedure, fact-finding hearings, became the rule for Turkey. Applicants claimed their villages were burnt down, Turkey claimed this was done by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK); an applicant claimed that she was raped in custody, Turkey said this person had never been taken into custody; the applicants claimed that their relative was killed while in custody, Turkey said this person had just escaped and joined the ranks of the PKK, and so on and so forth.
In all these cases the ECtHR held long hearings and examined all the evidence as if it were a local court in Turkey because there was no other thing to do. I attended some of these “fact-finding hearings” on behalf of applicants and, when I saw this absolute attitude of denial exhibited by the Turkish government, I was deeply ashamed of being a citizen of this country. It was unbearable to witness the lawyers’ desperate attempts to convince the members of the court that the applicants were actually well treated while in gendarme custody considering how the applicants took their place in the courtroom with amputated legs.
Back then it was quite difficult to understand why Turkey had put itself in this deeply embarrassing situation before the ECtHR. In all these cases there was solid evidence supporting the allegations of the applicants and it was crystal clear that Turkey was going to be found guilty at the end of all these trials. Your security forces burnt down villages while you did nothing. Villagers brought allegations to prosecutors, your prosecutors just turned a blind eye to all these grave human rights violations and some of these cases found their way to the ECtHR, but you still deny what happened, you still refuse to apologize to your citizens for what you did and you put yourself in this indefensible position before an international court.
Many years passed, my political analysis of Turkey deepened and I understood that denial is part of our political culture rather than an isolated incident involving these cases before the ECtHR.
Same lawyers
I don’t know who is in charge of this unit of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs today, but up until last year the same exact lawyers with whom I attended these fact-finding hearings were still responsible for the preparation of the government’s defense before the ECtHR. Even if these same lawyers are responsible for this “Nazi defense” in the Dink case, this does not absolve the government of its responsibility. It should have reorganized this unit and developed clear policies on ECtHR cases by now.
Friendly settlements
This government has always complained about being a victim of the status quo in Turkey. It does not have to defend the very same status quo before the ECtHR. A recognition of injustice and the willingness to issue an apology for it is a virtue, not a weakness. An important procedure that allows governments to deal with cases before they are fully examined by the ECtHR exists; it is called a friendly settlement. If this government wants to get rid of the status quo in Turkey, this embarrassing situation in the Dink case provides it quite a thought-provoking situation that could help it make a radical reform in the way Turkey deals with these cases.
First, get rid of all the lawyers in this unit who are not sensitive to human rights violations in the first place. Second, instruct all lawyers in this unit that they should do everything in their power to reach a friendly settlement with applicants in cases with apparent human rights violations in order to show respect to human dignity and to apologize to them on behalf of the state as well as to, of course, redress their pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages.
The Turkish state has done a lot of terrible things to its citizens that require it to apologize a million times over. If the government tries to understand the root causes and the mentality behind this “Dink disaster” before the ECtHR, then it may catch a new momentum to change this “never apologize” policy, which will in return change the entire relationship between the state and its citizens. It should, of course, start by apologizing to the Dink family.
