Recent publication by the Turkish media of photographs and video of police and a gendarmerie officer posing with Ogün Samast, the alleged killer of Hrant Dink, treating him as if he were a hero, has not only shown us again the existing problem of ultranationalism within the two security organizations supposed to defend the country from internal threats and also an ongoing conflict among both forces, causing weaknesses in the internal security operations. The photographs show the suspect in the killing, 17-year-old Samast, holding out a Turkish flag and posing with officers, some of them in uniform. Behind Samast a poster with another Turkish flag carries the words of Atatürk, founder of modern Turkey: "The nation's land is sacred. It cannot be left to fate." A voice in the video can be heard asking if the quote on the poster can be arranged above the suspect's head.
Then came also reports carried by some Turkish dailies that not only a police informant but also some gendarmerie officers were tipped off before Dink's murder that he might be killed. But unfortunately he still was killed.
Since we can't bring back Dink, the duty of the Turkish state now is not only to bring to justice those responsible behind Dink's murder, but also to rapidly put into force existing reforms that would enable both the police and the gendarmerie forces to effectively cooperate and share intelligence information, instead of sometimes seeing each other as adversaries.
The only way to ensure a close cooperation among these two security organizations is to put the Gendarmerie General Command (JGK) under the real control of the Interior Ministry, which would take orders from this civilian ministry instead of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) during peacetime.
In theory, the JGK operates under the Ministry of Interior during peacetime, who is in charge of domestic security and public order, while affiliated to the TSK during times of war. But in practice, the JGK operates under the directives of the TSK during peace time, too. Their budgets are under TSK control while their hierarchical structures are supervised by the military. The JGK members also take orders from the TSK while fulfilling their internal security duties, bypassing governors and heads of districts assigned by the Interior Ministry.
Even in the treatment of the police officers and the gendarmerie personnel, some of which were posing with Samast, the ultranationalist alleged killer of Dink, we witnessed discrimination in their treatment. For example, police officers responsible for the photo scandal and mismanagement in Dink's murder were removed from their current posts while the TSK has assigned those responsible gendarmerie officers to different cities of the country, instead of removing them from their posts.
Whereas if both members of the security organizations were affiliated to the Interior Ministry in any real sense, they would have both been subjected to the same treatment. We should bear in mind that this discriminatory attitude does hurt, among other things, the public conscience.
The lack of the civilian democratic oversight of the JGK and the existence of the ultranationalist police and gendarmerie officers within the two organizations as witnessed during which some of them were posing with Samast furthers weaknesses in the protection of the country.
Thus this situation underlines the urgency of taking steps to bring the JGK under government control too while launching programs to train both police and the gendarmerie forces to act together and to refrain from ultranationalist attitudes.
