Tuesday, July 22 2014

The European Union has welcomed the recent ruling of the Turkish Constitutional Court regarding an investigation into the 2007 murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

Today's Zaman reports that having reviewed an application filed by the Dink family, the Constitutional Court established that the murder investigation had not been conducted effectively and that judicial authorities failed to properly inform the family about developments in the case.

Dink, the late editor-in-chief of Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos, was shot and killed in broad daylight on January 19, 2007, by an ultranationalist teenager outside the offices of his newspaper in Istanbul. Evidence discovered since then has led to claims that the murder was linked to the "deep state," a term that refers to a shadowy group of military and civilian bureaucrats believed to have links with organized crime.

Although it has been more than seven years since the assassination, no satisfactory outcome has been produced by the trial. In the latest development in the case, the Istanbul 14th High Criminal Court on Thursday postponed the next hearing in the trial to Oct. 30. The case is now being heard once again by this court, after a high court overturned the court's earlier decisions to acquit the suspects.

The 14th Specially Authorized High Criminal Court -- as the court was previously called -- on Jan. 17, 2012, acquitted all suspects in the case of the charge of being a member of a terrorist organization. The Chief Prosecutor's Office of the Supreme Court of Appeals challenged the ruling, arguing that the suspects had not acted alone but as part of a criminal organization. 

Later, the 9th Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Appeals reversed the acquittal of the suspects on charges of membership in a criminal organization. The chamber ruled that the suspects should be retried on this charge.