TURKEY:The 18 men accused of murdering a prominent Armenian-Turkish editor appeared in an Istanbul court this morning at the start of a trial widely seen as a test of the effectiveness of Turkey's judicial system.
The conviction of Ogun Samast, a 17-year-old from the Black Sea city of Trabzon who admitted gunning Hrant Dink down on January 19th, looks to be a foregone conclusion.
Lawyers say the 8,000-page indictment contains more than enough evidence to ensure jail sentences of up to 48 years for two other men police believe organised the assassination.
All three chief suspects are known to have links to ultra-nationalist organisations deeply opposed to Dink's efforts to encourage debate on Turkey's last great taboo: the fate of the Ottoman empire's Armenians in 1915.
For Fethiye Cetin, however, who leads the lawyers for the prosecution, the key to the case lies in the judge's treatment of what she calls "gaping holes" in the murder investigation.
"The men in the dock are not the whole gang," she said. "Both police and military police displayed what looks very much like deliberate negligence in the case. They have not been included as part of the investigation and they must be."
Observers say the direction the trial takes largely depends on the attitude of Erhan Tuncel, one of the suspected organisers.
A former police informer, Tuncel reportedly told Trabzon police of the plot to assassinate Dink as early as February 2006. Records of a police operative calling him on his mobile phone an hour after the murder to ask whether it was "your people's work" were leaked to the press this March.
"The Turkish authorities failed to protect Dink, despite evidence his life was at risk," said Holly Carter of the New York-based Human Rights Watch. "They must now ensure that those responsible are held to account." With the trial taking place behind closed doors because of the age of the chief suspect, admirers of Dink have had to find other ways of keeping up pressure.
About 1,000 of them demonstrated near the courthouse yesterday, appealing for justice and carrying a banner that read: "We are all witnesses, we want justice". Yet, after a fortnight in which police have exposed a network of paramilitary-style organisations throughout Turkey - many of them run by retired military men - the mood behind the slogans was pessimistic. "I'm not expecting the court to get to the bottom of this - just look at the way the investigation has gone so far," said Ahmet Insel, a friend of Dink who teaches politics at Istanbul's prestigious Galatasaray University. "They'll jail the little men and let the big ones go, unless the little men talk, that is."
Dink's widow, Rakel, also voiced concerns about the investigation: "Today in court are these children turned killers, but where is the darkness that created them? What I call darkness is not something vague. You can find it in parts of the military police, the armed forces, the intelligence service, the police, the government and opposition, even in the press and civil society organisations. These are real people with real jobs. By endlessly pointing to enemies, they bring up children to be killers and call it a service to Turkey . . . But it's almost as though justice can't touch them or doesn't want to. Because if it goes too far, it'll see that it is a part of them."