European court: Turkey failed in protecting Dink’s life

The Strasbourg-based court's ruling, which also ruled that Turkey violated Dink's freedom of expression, came amid widespread calls that the ongoing trial at an İstanbul court should also include state officials, as there was strong evidence to suggest that some officials in the police and gendarmerie knew about the murder in advance but took no action to prevent it.

Lawyers for Dink's family want possible links between Ergenekon suspects and the Dink murder to be investigated. Recent evidence has shown that some defendants in the Ergenekon case were in contact with suspects in the Dink case.

The court said the police in both Trabzon -- the hometown of the assailant, Ogün Samast -- and İstanbul, and the Trabzon gendarmerie, had been informed of the likelihood of an assassination attempt, and even of the identity of the suspected instigators.

“In view of the circumstances, the threat of an assassination could be said to have been real and imminent,” the court said in a statement.

The court further noted that “none of the three state authorities informed of the planned assassination and its imminent realization had taken action to prevent it.” The judges also dismissed the Turkish state’s argument that they had not provide Dink with police protection because he had not requested it, by saying Dink could not possibly have known about the plan to assassinate him and it was the Turkish authorities’ -- who were informed of the plan -- responsibility to take action to safeguard his life.

Hrant Dink, the former editor-in-chief of the Armenian Agos newspaper, was gunned down by a hard-line nationalist teenager in front of his office on Jan. 19, 2007.

Arzu Becerik, a lawyer for the Dink family, said the top court had agreed with their complaints that state officials were not prosecuted despite evidence showing their involvement in the murder. “Our efforts will not stop until those officials are brought to justice and punished,” she said in televised remarks on Tuesday.

Dink was shot dead in front of the office of his newspaper, Agos, in broad daylight. The murder outraged many Turks and sparked a massive demonstration attended by tens of thousands of people on the day of his funeral. Demonstrators carried posters that read “we are all Hrant Dink” and “we are all Armenians.” Public frustration grew further after Dink’s death when it emerged that the teenage gunman was given a hero’s welcome at a police station following his detention, with officers taking pictures with Samast who was holding a Turkish flag.

Dink was convicted in 2005 for “insulting Turkishness” in a newspaper article, despite an expert report that he had not committed the said charge. He received threats from extremist rightist groups and ultranationalist circles until he was shot dead on Jan. 19, 2007.

The ruling came in response to five different applications by Dink before his death -- on the grounds that his freedom of expression was violated -- and his family following his assassination, claiming that Dink’s trial on charges of insulting Turkishness had made him a target of extreme nationalist groups. The applications were later merged.

The court said in the ruling that Turkey violated three articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, namely Article 2 (right to life, lack of an effective investigation), Article 10 (freedom of expression) and Article 13 (right to an effective remedy) in conjunction with Article 2. It sentenced Turkey to pay 105,000 euros to Dink’s family in compensation and another 28,595 euros to the court for expenses.

The court ruling also indicated that a controversial argument presented by Turkey’s defense failed to persuade judges in Strasbourg that Dink’s freedom of expression had not been violated. In the official defense of the Turkish state, lawyers cited the case of a leader of a neo-Nazi organization in Europe, while defending the trial of Dink under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK). The disclosure of the defense brought embarrassment to the government, which says it is committed to advancing freedoms. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu later said he had not seen the text of the defense and that he regretted the Nazi reference.

In a statement following the release of the court’s verdict, the Foreign Ministry vowed to take measures to prevent the repetition of similar violations in future. The statement also said Turkey would not appeal the verdict.

The European Court of Human Rights agreed with Dink’s family that his conviction under Article 301, later upheld by the Court of Appeals, “made him a target of extreme nationalists.”

Dink faced trial after he wrote “the purified blood that will replace the blood poisoned by the ‘Turk’ can be found in the noble vein linking Armenians to Armenia, provided that the former are aware of it” in an article. The court said an analysis of the full series of articles in which Dink used the impugned expression showed clearly that what he described as “poison” had not been “Turkish blood”, as held by the Court of Appeals, but the “perception of Turkish people” by Armenians and the obsessive nature of the Armenian diaspora’s campaign to have Turkey recognize Armenian claims of genocide during the late Ottoman Empire.

The ruling said it was doubtful whether Dink’s conviction was legitimate and dismissed its necessity, saying it did not answer any pressing social need in Turkey.