ISTANBUL, Turkey (Agence France-Presse)—Turkish prosecutors on Tuesday formally linked the alleged mastermind of the failed July 15 coup attempt, Fethullah Gulen, to the 2007 killing of the Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink that shook the country.
Istanbul prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Gulen as well as a prominent former prosecutor and three journalists in its probe into the murder.
Gulen, an Islamic preacher residing in exile in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, is already the subject of multiple arrest warrants related to last year’s failed coup which the government has accused him of leading. He denies the charges.
Numerous reports speculated over a possible link between Gulen and the Dink killing after the coup but this is the first time that prosecutors have made a formal connection.
According to the request by prosecutors, the murder of Dink went ahead because of Gulen’s influence on the security forces at the time.
Along with Gulen, the warrant targets the former prosecutor Zekeriya Oz who was behind a graft probe of those in the inner circle of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Authorities blamed the probe on Gulen.
Also wanted are journalists Faruk Mercan, Ekrem Dumanli and Adem Yavuz Arslan who wrote for publications sympathetic to Gulen and are now believed to be out of the country.
Dink, a member of Turkey’s Armenian minority, was murdered by a teenage gunman on January 19, 2007, near the offices of the Agos newspaper which he founded.
Relations between Turks and Armenians are scarred by the Ottoman Empire’s perpetration of the Armenian Genocide during the peak of World War I.
Dink promoted reconciliation between Armenians and Turks, a prospect that remains far off due to the dispute over the 1915 killings and a series of other rows.
Although his assassin, just 17 at the time, was rapidly arrested and sentenced, the trial into the killing still grinds on with Dink’s supporters losing confidence on its ability to shed light on the plot.
Turkey meanwhile is strongly pressing for the extradition of Gulen to face trial over his alleged involvement in the coup.
In the latest contact, Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag spoke to his U.S. counterpart Jeff Sessions on Tuesday and asked for Gulen’s temporary detention, Turkish media said.
I think this is yet another evil Turkish scheme orchestrated by the criminal Turkish government to get their hands on the Turkish cleric in exile in the United States. I strongly believe that the Turkish government itself was behind the murder of Hrant Dink on January 19th, 2007. They enacted the article 301 of the Turkish Criminal Code, better known as “Insulting Turkishness”, to create a suitable atmosphere of hate and nationalism to have Dink murdered in order to silence him on the Armenian Genocide and now they want to use his murder to get their rival Gulen, whom they have accused of plotting their own staged coup, extradited back to Turkey after having failed many false attempts to do so.
Their most recent failed attempt at this was the orchestrated assassination of the Russian ambassador by a Turkish gunman, allegedly tied to the Muslim cleric, who also served as a bodyguard to the Turkish president Erdogan himself. This murderer must have had many opportunities to get to and to get rid of Erdogan but never did so and soon after ambassador’s assassination, and a cowardly-schemed thawing of relations between Turkey and Russia by Erdogan long after shooting down the Russian jet and boasting about it, a link between the gunman and the cleric was claimed by the Turkish government in order to put the weight of Russia on this matter to get to the cleric.
They are now using the murder of their Armenian victim to get to their Turkish enemy on foreign soil. I guess it is true when they say there is no honor among thieves and in this case all thieves are none other than Turkish criminals themselves using each other to advance their own agendas at the expense of their murdered victims.
Turkey’s corrupt Rajab oghloo looks holy angel, compare to Gulen Oghloo. Deep state Turkey will pass Hrant Dink conspiracy murder accusation like a political soccer ball, for each others, for ever, like hidden truth of Armenian Genocide with their own Turkish style fake documents. I won’t be surprise after a few years they will dump on ISIS Jihadists, so every Turk will look like an holy angel!
Of course Gulen is guilty of every crime having been committed in Turkey for the past 12 years! I’m a little suspect of Erdogan’s government trying to create tension between Armenians and members of the Hizmet movement–especially in the recent year when Hizmet has actually shown interest in recognizing the Genocide. At any rate, I’m more curious what Mr. Dink’s family thinks of these allegations. I’d like to know more about the family’s reaction to all of this. God bless them. Dink was a great man to both Turkey and to the Armenians as well. He continues to be missed dearly.