TURKEY: Nicholas Birchvisited Trabzon, home town of the alleged murderer of journalist Hrant Dink
Ask Mehmet Akcelep the first thing he thought when he heard Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink had been murdered, and he answers without hesitation: "I bet that's the work of a local man." Like others in Trabzon, a city of around 400,000 people on Turkey's eastern Black Sea coast, Akcelep, a local councillor, has grown used to seeing his home town in the news for the wrong reasons.
It was here, last February, that a 16-year-old boy shot and killed an Italian priest in the local Catholic church. It was here, in May 2005, that four leftist students narrowly escaped death at the hands of a huge lynch mob. The city has witnessed two more lynch attempts since, part of a growing national trend.
Then, on Saturday, came news of the arrest of Ogun Samast. "I said my prayers and then I shot [ Dink]," the 17-year-old Samast said. "I feel no remorse. He said Turkish blood was dirty blood." He turned out to be from Pelitli, a suburb of Trabzon.
"What has happened to Trabzon?" headlined the newspaper Radikalon Monday. The question is beside the point. In a country where nationalism is rife, and schools teach obedience, not critical thought, any youngster anywhere could have said what Samast said.
But radical nationalism has been strongest in the towns south of the 3,500m peaks dividing Trabzon from the bleak Anatolian interior. It's only recently that Trabzon has taken the lead, and locals say the phenomenon is spiralling out of control.
"What you have here is a headless monster, a nursery for potential assassins," says Omer Faruk Altuntas, a lawyer and local head of a small left-wing party. "You may not like its policies, but at least the MHP controls its followers," agrees Mehmet Akcelep, referring to Turkey's biggest extremist nationalist party. "But Samast and hundreds of others like him aren't party people; they're free particles."
In part, Trabzon's problems are Turkey's problems. Its population has swollen to 400,000 recently as farmers fled the failing countryside. In Pelitli, youth unemployment is high, with only two internet cafes to while away the time.
Stoked by state officials, politicians and media, a new, ugly strain of nationalism has been rising in Turkey for the past three years. Many of Trabzon's men have died in Turkey's 25-year war against Kurdish separatism, creating a fertile breeding ground for nationalist sentiments.
The May 2005 lynch attack had its roots in comments made by Turkey's top general after two Kurdish teenagers were arrested in southern Turkey for trying to burn the Turkish flag. When the leftist students began distributing leaflets about prison conditions, two TV stations told viewers they were separatists. Within five minutes, 2,000 shopkeepers were on the street.
"Three or four times, [ the local media has] pretty much invited people to take out their guns and start shooting," says Gultekin Yucesan, head of Trabzon's Human Rights Association.
In most Anatolian towns, where people only read local newspapers for the used car adverts, that wouldn't matter. But Trabzon's 10 papers and TV stations are influential because this is a city built around football.
Trabzonspor is the only non-Istanbul club ever to have won the Turkish league. And while everybody here supports it, some say its influence is far from positive. Rumours have long circulated about its links with a local mafia that controls this crucial staging post in Black Sea human trafficking networks. Just last year, the club's best player was banned for conniving with match-fixing mafiosi.
Locals say it's no surprise that Ogun Samast and Yasin Hayal, the man believed to have given the assassin his gun, played amateur football for Pelitlispor.
"Trabzon football has become a semi-official conduit for nationalism", says retired teacher Nuri Topal.
Gultekin Yucesan describes an incident he saw at Sunday's Trabzonspor match: after a few bad decisions by the referee, one supporter shouted, "Do that again and I'll put a white hat on and blow your head off." Samast was wearing a white hat when he shot Hrant Dink.
"That's not acceptable in a stadium," Yucesan says. "When it begins to leak outside. . ." "Trabzon must learn its lesson," one local paper said. Judging from attitudes in Pelitli, the chances are looking slim.
"Who cares about that Jew," says one young man standing outside a local tea-house. "Cut it out," barks Mehmet Samast, a distant relative of Dink's murderer. He says how much he regrets what happened, how ashamed he feels. He is sincere. But then he goes on to say that Ogun Samast was victim of an international plot. "Trabzon is vital strategically," he says. "This murder was the work of the Americans, or the Armenian diaspora. They didn't like [ Dink] either, you know."