Article 301, again!

Or, is there anyone with brains in Turkey who does not believe the Jan. 19, 2007 Dink murder could have been prevented, if police and gendarmerie intelligence worked properly and the Istanbul Governor’s Office provided adequate security to our colleague, rather than summoning him to a meeting with a deputy governor who warned him that he should behave well?

Or, particularly, after all we have heard and read about the Dink trial, revelations of the alleged hit-man, confessions of victims of the intelligence fiasco, the inability to bring charges against police and military officers who apparently, at least, neglected their duty, can we say with confidence there is definitely not "official involvement" in the Dink murder and nothing to make the Turkish state responsible for the tragedy?

Is it not obvious to many of us who have following the Dink murder trial, why the prosecution have failed, so far, to go further than the hit man and bring to justice the culprits within the state who masterminded this heinous crime, is it a demonstration of the fact there is at least one gang within the state that is still untouchable?

An interesting interview
Our journalist colleague Okan Müderrisoğlu reported Monday on an interview with Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Şahin. The minister was quoted as saying, over the last six months prosecutors have filed 381 applications seeking ministerial approval to launch court cases under the contentious Article 301 of the Penal Code, which regulates penalties for insulting the Turkish state and state organs. Out of these 381 applications, the minister said he approved court cases to be opened in "only 47" of them, including that of writer Temel Demirer.

Demirer is now risking up to five years imprisonment on grounds he "insulted and degraded" the Turkish state, when after the 2007 murder of Dink he said, "There is a genocide in our history. Its name is the Armenian genocide. Hrant explained this reality to all of us at the cost of his life and blood. I am now committing a crime and calling everyone to commit a crime. Those who do not commit a crime against this murderer-state are accomplices in the Dink murder. We have to commit this crime so what happened to our Armenian brothers yesterday, should not happen to our Kurdish brothers todayÉ"

Intellectual responsibility
What Demirer said, immediately after the country lived through the psychological trauma of the murder of Dink, was unfortunately rather strong. But, he was revolting against the untimely loss of a prominent member of our nation, in a cold-blooded murder, just because he did not subscribe to some nationalist myth or to an official version of history, which even today cannot concede the tragedies and the immense sufferings the Anatolian population of all ethnic backgrounds were subjected to during the dissolution years of the Ottoman Empire. Minister Şahin said no one can call the Turkish state a "murderer" and as the Justice Minister, he would not allow it because insulting the Turkish state by calling it a "murderer" cannot be an exercise of freedom of speech.

What the minister said, indeed was not much different to what his predecessor, Cemil Çiçek, once told me as to why Turkey would not scrap the contentious article all together and instead made cosmetic changes to its text. "We cannot let people insult Turkey and get away with it!" he said.

In democracies, people and the state must be accustomed to, even very harsh, criticism and no one can be obliged to subscribe to a general perception or the official version of anything. Yes, the state cannot and should not be accused of being a murderer, but the state should also be able to bring to justice those elements within the state who have entrusted themselves with the duty and power of defending the state the way they like against what they themselves perceive as a threat to the state or to national security.