For Hrant Dink: 18th year letter
The news is a bit mixed this year. I will come to the case last. First, let me start by giving the bad news that has unfortunately become traditional. Osman Kavala, Çiğdem Mater, Tayfun Kahraman and Can Atalay are still in prison on the grounds of the Gezi case. Kurdish politicians Selahattin Demirtaş and Selçuk Mızraklı are also in prison.
Local elections took place on March 31 and the CHP emerged as the first party in the elections for the first time since 2002. The DEM Party, the successor to the pro-Kurdish HDP, also won many mayoralties. However, the trustee application continues unabated despite this picture. The CHP mayor of Esenyurt (İstanbul) was imprisoned and a trustee was appointed in his place. The DEM Party mayors of Batman and Mardin were also removed from their posts. At one point, it became difficult to keep a list. Finally, the DEM Party mayors of Mersin Akdeniz were also removed from office and trustees were appointed in their places. Beşiktaş’s (İstanbul) CHP mayor Rıza Akpolat was also detained on the grounds of “tender fraud” when these lines were written.
The AKP-MHP alliance has somehow managed to remove the atmosphere of election defeat from the agenda. In the meantime, we are also in the midst of an important process. Although we cannot call it a “process” for now. MHP Chairman Bahçeli made a statement that I can summarize as “(PKK leader) Abdullah Öcalan should speak in the Turkish Grand National Assembly, let him declare that the organization has laid down its arms, let him benefit from his "right to hope.” The main agenda of politics is this statement and the developments that followed.
DEM Party members Sırrı Süreyya Önder and Pervin Buldan went to İmralı, met with Abdullah Öcalan and shared Öcalan’s message. The government took this step with an approach such as “Let the terrorist organization end its existence, let Turkey be strengthened with Turkish-Kurdish brotherhood.” It is not yet known whether it will be possible for Öcalan to benefit from his “right to hope” at the end of the process, in other words, to have his conditions eased. However, the “İmralı Delegation” consisting of Önder, Buldan and Ahmet Türk held a series of meetings with political parties. The delegation is expected to go to İmralı again. Bahçeli said after the meetings, “At the end of the second meeting to be held between the DEM delegation and İmralı, it should be announced without any conditions that the organizational existence of the PKK has ended.”
In the meantime, the delegation also met with former HDP Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtaş, who is being held in Edirne Prison. Demirtaş supported the process and said, “Political peace will be permanent if it is achieved in a way that opens all channels of the struggle for democratization, equality, justice and freedoms". It was an important reminder. Let me say that the process is progressing with hope and question marks for now.
We have experienced losses that will upset you this year. We lost Nazar Büyüm, Archbishop Karekin Bekçiyan and finally Yetvart Tomasyan, or ‘Brother Tomo’. You had an old and deep relationship, friendship and brotherhood with all of them. We console ourselves by saying that you will meet somewhere.
I have no good news to give regarding the case. Ogün Samast, who shot you, had already been released in the last months of 2023. The release caused outrage, a lawsuit was filed against Samast on the grounds of “committing a crime on behalf of the organization while not being a member of the organization”, but that lawsuit has also entered the statute of limitations.
The issue was not that Samast served so many more or less years, as we have said from the beginning. The issue was that the process that made you a target should be illuminated and the assassination should be revealed in all its dimensions. This year, it did not happen either. But everyone who strives for justice continues to say, “This case will not end until we say it is over.”
Maybe I will end this letter with better news next year. Those who love you do not give up hope and struggle.
