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  • Killing Hrant Dink Twice

    Rudaw.net
    Jan 22 2011


    Killing Hrant Dink Twice

    22/01/2011 11:51:00 By ZAFER YÖRÜK

    `I don't know why the Turks can't admit it, express sorrow and go on.
    That's the worst. You do all these things to the victim and then you
    say it never happened. That is killing them twice.' This was the
    commentary of Thomas Burgenthal, an Auschwitz survivor, lawyer and a
    member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, on the Turkish
    state's persistent denial of the Armenian genocide.

    On January 19th 2011, we commemorated the fourth anniversary of the
    assassination of the prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink,
    and even the metaphor `killing twice' would be insufficient to
    describe what has (not) happened during the four years that have
    passed without Dink.

    Immediately after the murder, two assassins were arrested by the
    police, which inspired some hope among Turkey's democratic opposition.
    However, the Dink trials have continued for four years without
    tangible progress and none of the conspirers behind the assassination
    have been brought to justice. It is a well-known secret that these
    conspirers include high-ranking military and civilian bureaucrats,
    whom both the government and the judiciary obviously lack the courage
    to touch. In fact, evidence so far indicates that the government,
    along with the bureaucracy and the military, has been institutionally
    involved in the obstruction and perversion of the course of justice.

    The Turkish `defense'

    One of these indicators is the government's defense in the European
    Court of Human Rights (ECHR), in regard to the conviction of Dink for
    `insulting Turkishness' prior to his assassination. Dink, founder and
    chief editor of the Armenian weekly newspaper, Agos, was prosecuted on
    the grounds of his comments about Armenian identity and the
    recognition of the Armenian genocide. He was convicted under Article
    301 of the Turkish Criminal Code, against which he appealed at the
    ECHR. After his assassination, Dink's family made a further appeal to
    the court due to the negligence of authorities in preventing the
    murder. The ECHR merged both appeals.

    In August 2010, the Turkish state submitted its defense to the ECHR,
    referring to the `Kühnen case' previously tried before the
    international court. The ECHR had approved the decision by German
    courts to convict Kühnen, a neo-Nazi who had spread anti-Semitic
    speeches in various pamphlets. The Turkish state argued in their
    analogy that Dink similarly `incited the public to hatred' through
    `hate speech' and therefore he had deserved the conviction.

    The ECHR convicted the Turkish state on both counts, that is, unlawful
    conviction and negligence in preventing the murder. The merger of the
    appeals and the conviction imply that Turkey's judiciary, bureaucracy
    and government were all involved in the murder of Hrant Dink. The
    government's defense, on the other hand, represents its hegemonic
    nationalist mentality and yet another typical act of `killing twice.'

    Neurosis and thuggery

    Sigmund Freud said: `The neurotic repeats without remembering.' In
    fact, the very compulsion to repeat is a neurotic symptom that emerges
    from the urge to maintain the repression of the memory of a certain
    event in the unconscious. In other words, for the psychologically
    disturbed personality, `killing twice' is a necessity.

    Nationalist discourses that concur with each other over the systematic
    denial of the Armenian genocide involve the repetition of the original
    act of murder (the Armenian genocide) through degradation of the
    Armenian identity. They unite the official and popular versions of
    nationalism in a chorus of denial of the historical events, driven by
    fantasies of an Armenian `masterplan' for Turkey's disintegration.
    According to Professor Colin Tatz, an Australian academic, "Turkey has
    used a mix of academic sophistication and diplomatic thuggery to put
    both memory and history in reverse gear.'

    Most of the thuggery has in fact been directed against Turkish
    citizens domestically, where any mention of the Armenian genocide is
    liable to be punished by the Turkish state, with the possibility of it
    then leading to lynch mob action or even political assassination.

    However, the events that these symptomatic acts aim to erase from the
    memory inevitably keep on coming up in occasional outbursts,
    analogical to what Freud called the `slips of the tongue': `Let us be
    clear to the world's public: in the past we punished all the infamous
    half-casts, who, not content with profiting from our lands, attacked
    our possessions, the lives and honor of the Turks. We know that our
    forefathers were right, and if we were to face such threats again, we
    would not hesitate to do what is necessary.' (Akit, February 12th
    2001).

    Obstructing the facts

    Hrant Dink tried to exist as an Armenian democrat in the aggressive
    nationalist environment of this country, where, despite international
    guarantees, the Armenian minority have been systematically degraded,
    silenced and persecuted. A consequence of these policies has been the
    constant decrease in Turkey's Armenian population since the 1920s,
    from 300,000 to around 60,000 in 2006. In fact, Hrant Dink's
    assassination has been perceived by many as a major link in this chain
    of sustained harassment.

    In Hrant's radically democratic personality, the Armenian community of
    Turkey had found, for the first time, an internationally recognized
    representative, who courageously broke a ninety-year-long silence over
    the Armenian genocide and addressed the constant denial, degradation
    and persecution that have been in effect ever since. Hrant Dink led
    the Armenian community to break out of their shell by linking the
    cause of his people with the broader democratic movement in Turkey.

    The court conviction of `insulting Turkishness' was certainly an
    attempt to silence this courageous voice, and in effect made Dink a
    natural target of hardline nationalists. He began to receive death
    threats and on one occasion he was threatened by Istanbul's vice
    governor. Eventually, on January 19th 2007, Dink fell victim to a
    planned murder, which was committed in the centre of Istanbul.

    For the last four years, the obstruction of the course of justice -
    the attempts to cover up the institutional involvement of the Turkish
    state in this assassination, and to maintain the immunity from justice
    of the state officials responsible - seems to have united the Turkish
    judiciary and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government in a
    `holy alliance,' while on other issues they are constantly engaged in
    an almost bloody dispute. There are rumors that the two assassins
    could also be released from prison next year if the trial continues at
    its current snail pace.

    Historian Taner Akçam comments that `many of the Turkish efforts aimed
    to obscure the facts, rather than dispute a false charge.' Through
    these efforts, Turkish nationalism is `killing twice' history's
    millions of victims. And the Turkish government and legal system have
    similarly been killing Hrant Dink twice through their systematic
    obstruction of the facts of this shameful murder.



    Zafer Yörük taught political theory at University of London between
    1997 and 2006. His research interests range across politics of
    identity, discourse analysis and psychoanalysis. He writes a column
    for Rudaw every Friday from Izmir.

    http://www.rudaw.net/english/science/columnists/3422.html




    From: A. Papazian
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