Police chiefs in Trabzon, where the preparations for the murder of Hrant Dink were made, and in Istanbul, where the murder took place, were acquitted by the Court. In a judgement full of contradictions, the Court held the officers of the Department of Intelligence responsible for the murder.
Not carrying out an operation
While provincial police chiefs, whose main duty was to carry out these operations, were not sentenced, the Department of Intelligence, which had no duty to carry out operations, was held responsible.
Yasin Hayal was carrying out the preparations for the murder he wanted to commit in Trabzon. Erhan Tuncel conveyed this information to the Trabzon police. In the light of this information, the intelligence information compiled about Yasin HAYAL since 2004 within the scope of terrorist activities is contained in the F-4 report dated 15 February 2006 and in the F-5 report no. 7 dated 09.10.2005, in which it is stated that Yasin, following his release from prison, harboured a great hatred against Armenians and that his thoughts and intention to commit an attack were as follows: "If I commit an action again, I will do it in Istanbul".
Who should carry out the operation?
In order to prevent the murder of Hrant Dink, an operation must have to be carried out against the Yasin Hayal group. For this operation, the Intelligence Branch must first convey its own assessment to the Anti-Terror Branch together with the information it has. Then, the Anti-Terror Branch, which is the executive unit within the police, and the Public Prosecutor's Office conduct the necessary work and the operation is carried out. This operation is within the scope of judicial law enforcement activities.
Intelligence branches have no role in judicial law enforcement activities. Intelligence units report and evaluate the information they obtain and, when deemed necessary, they forward the matter to the relevant branch that will carry out the operation. In the case of Hrant Dink's murder, Engin Dinç, Director of Trabzon Intelligence Branch, who evaluated the intelligence received from Erhan Tuncel, declared that there was not enough information and findings for an operation and did not forward the matter to the Anti-Terror Branch.
The task of evaluating the intelligence is the duty of Engin Dinç, the Provincial Intelligence Branch Chief. It was the duty of Provincial Intelligence Branch Chief Engin Dinç to convey the need for an operation to the Anti-Terror Branch.
What does the court say?
Nevertheless, in order to acquit Engin Dinç and put the guilt on Ramazan Akyürek and Ali Fuat Yılmazer, the court states that the operation to be carried out is not a judicial operation but a planned intelligence operation and that this operation should be carried out by the Department of Intelligence. A planned intelligence operation is an operation used to decipher organisations that have many members and operate in more than one province. This operation does not necessarily result in a judicial operation and the arrest of criminals. In the Dink case, based on the information received from his informant, it is known that Yasin Hayal was the one who planned the action and that he only discussed the matter with his close friends in Trabzon.
Furthermore, Article 68 of the relevant regulation states that the preparation, execution and finalisation of a planned intelligence operation shall be determined by a guideline, but this guideline has not been issued. In practice, these operations are carried out by the Provincial Intelligence Brances by making preparations and submitting them for approval. Before the murder of Hrant Dink, there was no request for an operation from the Trabzon Intelligence Branch. For operations that were not initiated, the Department of Intelligence's duty of inter-provincial coordination cannot be mentioned.
Article 62 of the Regulation states: "The Department may conduct an ex officio intelligence operation if an activity related to the area of duty is detected throughout the country or if there is a possibility that it may affect a geographically or demographically large region." Engin Dinç, who sent an expert letter to the court in which he is already on trial as a defendant, stated that the Department of Intelligence had previously carried out ex officio planned intelligence operations, but it is not known what these were. The court put the statements in Engin Dinç's letter into the verdict as they were. "It has been understood that the intelligence obtained regarding the planning of the instigator towards the target is in the nature of working involving more than one province and organising an operation by acting together, that it requires evaluation within the scope of the PIO application in question, that similar operations have been carried out within this framework, but no action has been taken in the specific case, that this application should be carried out by the C Branch of Department within the framework of the regulation."
Conclusion:
- The operation that needs to be carried out is the operation to be conducted by the judicial units. In this case, Engin Dinç is responsible for not informing the judicial units that an operation should be carried out.
- However, the Court, with an intentionally wrong assessment, stated that what should have been done was a planned intelligence operation. Even in this case, according to experienced intelligence officers, the unit that initiates planned intelligence operations in practice is the Provincial Intelligence Branches, not the Department.
- Moreover, the last information about Yasin Hayal's action received by the Department of Intelligence on 8 April 2006, 7 months before the murder, was the information that Hayal had been tried to be dissuaded from the action. In order to complete its own narrative of the Gulen movement murder, the court, with a far-fetched decision, stated that Akyürek and Yılmazer were the ones who should have carried out the operation."
After the Mc Donald's bombing, Erhan Tuncel started to be used as an auxiliary intelligence officer by the police officers of Trabzon intelligence branch. The Trabzon intelligence officers were receiving information from Tuncel about far-right and religious groups. He was especially following Yasin Hayal. On 15 February 2006, he gave intelligence that Yasin Hayal would kill Hrant Dink. This intelligence, which was turned into a report, was shared with the Istanbul Police and the Department of Intelligence.
The intelligence received from Tuncel was turned into a second report on 8 April 2006. In this report, it was written that efforts were made to dissuade Yasin Hayal from committing the attack, that Yasin had entered a job somewhere and started to play in a football team.
After the police officer Muhittin Zenit, who was in charge of Tuncel, said that Tuncel could not be effective and that he should be dismissed from the informant service, Engin Dinç, the chief of the intelligence branch, called Erhan Tuncel to his office and talked to him face to face. As the witnesses of the meeting confirmed in their testimonies, it was revealed that he said "this kid would do nothing for a year, but he could give us one piece of information and save us".
It was understood from the telecommunication records and statements of the defendants that the contact with Erhan Tuncel continued after this meeting. However, from 8 April 2006 until 17 November 2006, when Erhan Tuncel was removed from the auxilary intelligence officer status, two F3 interview reports were issued with numbers 11 and 12.
Who dismissed Erhan Tuncel from the status of auxiliary intelligence officer?
The request for the dismissal of Erhan Tuncel from the status of auxiliary intelligence officer was made by Mehmet Ayhan and Onur Karakaya, police officers of the Trabzon intelligence branch. The branch chief Faruk Sarı (who took office in September 2006) and deputy chief Hasan Durmuşoğlu signed the request. This request was submitted to the provincial police chief Reşat Altay and his signature was obtained. As a matter of procedure, it was sent to the Department of Intelligence. It was also signed by Ramazan Akyürek, the head of the Directorate, Erhan Tuncel's registry as an auxiliary officer was cancelled.
What does the court say?
An accusation is being made against the Department of Intelligence with the allegation that "with the last letter on the dismissal of the auxilary intelligence officer status, it could have been foreseen even as a result of a simple judgement that the instigator would be completely free and that the murder would be certain to take place if it was not prevented, but this was not done and the Tuncel was dismissed by giving approval to the process".
- It was the Trabzon Police Department that evaluated Erhan Tuncel's efficiency and took the decision to dismiss him from auxilary intelligence officer status. The provincial police chief was Reşat Altay. As Reşat Altay said in his own statement, he knew who Erhan Tuncel was and even offered to meet Tuncel face to face when he learnt that Tuncel was a problematic person.
- After this decision was taken, an official letter was written to the Department of Intelligence to remove Erhan Tuncel from the records. Then Erhan Tuncel was removed from the records. As a result, it was the Trabzon Provincial Police that took the decision and the Department of Intelligence that followed removal of records procedure.
The court also stated that "moreover, considering that the defendant Ramazan Akyürek, who was the Head of the Department of Intelligence at that time, was previously the Provincial Police Chief in Trabzon province, and that he personally knew about the Tuncel, the instigator Yasin and the plan against the Dink, as well as the F3-F4s dated February/2006 and the related cover letter signed by him and sent to the Directorate, it is beyond explanation that he was in the best position to know the probable / definite grave consequences of the dismissal of the informant".
- Ramazan Akyürek was aware of Erhan Tuncel and Yasin Hayal when he was Trabzon provincial police chief and he did his duty and reported the intelligence of the murder to the relevant authorities. Three months after this letter, he was appointed as the head of the Department of Intelligence. As the head of the Department, he signed the deregistration process in accordance with the decision taken by the Trabzon provincial police.
- It was the Trabzon Police Department that followed up the affair of Erhan Tuncel and Yasin Hayal as part of its duty and evaluated the efficiency of Erhan Tuncel. However, the Court attributes to Ramazan Akyürek the duty of monitoring the efficiency of Erhan Tuncel and the Yasin Hayal affair and then says that he is responsible for not fulfilling this duty. It is clear that the fact that he has past knowledge on a subject does not mean that he has an official duty and responsibility on that subject.
What happened to Resat Altay?
As Altay said in his own statement, he knew about Erhan Tuncel. Despite this, he approved Tuncel's request to be dismissed from the auxilary intelligence officer status.
- If Erhan Tuncel's deregistration constitutes a criminal offence, Reşat Altay, who took the decision, is surely among those responsible.
- If Ramazan Akyürek, who made the deregistration as a matter of procedure, is sentenced for this, Reşat Altay should have been sentenced first.
- The Court accepted that Reşat Altay was not aware of the incident, stating that "the Court has not been able to determine anything to the contrary of his defence that he was not aware of the intelligence information since it was not presented to him in the form of a briefing". However, his signature is on both the dismissal of Tuncel decision and the F3 report no. 11 of the interview with Erhan Tuncel. Despite this, the Court acquitted Reşat Altay by not sentencing him with a vague statement such as "it was understood that the process was concealed from the defendant".
Dismissal of Erhan Tuncel from Auxiliary Intelligence Officer
Resat Altay, the Trabzon provincial police chief, who assessed Erhan Tuncel's efficiency and signed the decision of dismissal, was acquitted. However, the Department of intelligence officials who confirmed the removal of the intelligence officer's status from the system were sentenced.
Statements in the communication sent to Istanbul
The court acquitted Ahmet İlhan Güler, stating that the statements in the communication dated 17 February 2006 from the Trabzon intelligence branch to the Istanbul police did not mean that Hrant dink would be killed.
The most noteworthy incident prior to the murder of Hrant Dink is the communication dated 17 February 2006 sent from the Trabzon Police to the Istanbul Police Department. In this communication, it was stated that Yasin Hayal was going to carry out a sound-making action against Hrant Dink. Additionally, in the last paragraph of the communication, it was written that Yasin Hayal had previously placed a bomb in McDonald's and detonated it, and that he was capable of doing whatever he set his mind to. The communication called for Istanbul Police to check the address of the bakery where Yasin Hayal's brother Osman Hayal, the person with whom Yasin Hayal would stay when he came to Istanbul for the action, was thought to work and to check Osman Hayal's telephone number. As detailed in the inspector reports, the Istanbul Police Department did not carry out any work in relation to this communication. Moreover, in order to avoid responsibility, they forged documents after the murder, which were detected by the inspectors.
Despite this, Istanbul Police officials were not investigated for a long time. Ahmet İlhan Güler, the chief of the Istanbul Intelligence Branch, argued that the phrase "sound-making action" in this letter was ambiguous. He said that this expression did not mean an action with a definite purpose of killing. He defended himself by saying that more work could have been done if Trabzon Police had used the phrase "killing". In this way, Ahmet İlhan Güler was spared from being sentenced.
Which meaning does the text convey?
Throughout the trial, everyone except Istanbul Police officers said that they understood from the communication that Yasin Hayal would carry out an attack on Hrant Dink's life. In the inspectors' reports, it was stated that the letter from Trabzon carried point intelligence. The fact that both the name of a famous journalist like Hrant Dink and the name of Yasin Hayal, the perpetrator of the bombing, were mentioned showed how important the intelligence was. Moreover, according to the findings of the inspectors, even the Deputy Chief of the Intelligence Branch of Istanbul had written "important, do what is necessary" on the communication.
Why is the text different from the one sent to the Department of Intelligence?
According to the relevant legislation, provincial intelligence branches are obliged to send the F4 information reports written by provincial intelligence branches to the Department of Intelligence in their entirety. However, when the provincial intelligence branches correspond among themselves, they do not write the report in its exact form, but summarise it. The aforementioned text was written by the officers of Trabzon Intelligence Branch. The chief of this branch was Engin Dinç.
What does the court say?
The court concluded that "the mention of 'sound-making action' in the content of the communication can be understood at different levels and does not definitely contain information about a murder". It said that Ahmet İlhan Güler's actions as a result of this communication were limited and that he had done his part. In other words, the court considered as insignificant what the investigators, the defendants, witnesses and experts in the trial considered important. Trabzon Intelligence Branch wrote this text to say that Yasin Hayal had a plan to kill Hrant Dink. Engin Dinç even claimed that this issue was important and that he called Ahmet İlhan Güler on the phone and gave him detailed information.
At the same time with the communication sent to Istanbul, an F4 report was also sent to the Department of Intelligence. Both the communication and the report contained information in the same line. The court asked the Department of Intelligence officers why they did not follow up on such important information and co-ordinate between the provinces and said that the department was responsible.
Conclusion:
- The court said that the article containing the phrase "sound-making action against Hrant Dink" was of trivial importance, therefore Ahmet İlhan Güler, the chief of the Istanbul Intelligence Branch, was not sentenced.
- If the text was about an important piece of intelligence and was written in vague terms, Engin Dinç, who wrote the text, was at great fault, but he was not penalised.
- Either it is clear that the text contains important intelligence and Güler should be sentenced, or the text was written in vague terms and Engin Dinç should be sentenced. However, the court acquitted both of them and sentenced the Department of Intelligence officials.
Hrant Dink was a resident of Istanbul. According to the regulation on protection services, a provincial protection commission decides to provide protection to a person whose life is in danger. This commission is chaired by the provincial governor and attended by police and gendarmerie law enforcement officers.
According to Article 10 of the regulation, a protection order can be taken upon the request of individuals. It is known that Hrant Dink did not make such a request.
According to Article 11, a protection order may be issued ex officio to persons in life-threatening danger upon the proposal of intelligence units and approval of the commission.
Was Hrant Dink's life in danger?
Hrant Dink was subjected to an intense targeting propaganda in Istanbul. A statement was made in front of the Agos newspaper saying "Hrant Dink is the target of our anger". Lawsuits were filed against him for insulting Turkishness. He was directly targeted in national newspapers with the headline "Look at the Armenian". The Patriarch, the leader of the Armenian community, requested protection for Armenian citizens from the governor of Istanbul. The Department of Intelligence issued a warning to the intelligence branches of all provinces about possible attacks arising out of the Armenian genocide issue. A threatening letter was sent to Hrant Dink, which was handed over to the prosecutor's office and an investigation was requested. Most importantly, a communication was sent from the Trabzon Police to the Istanbul Intelligence Branch on 17 February 2006 regarding an action against Dink. Therefore, Dink's life was in danger.
Who proposes a protection order?
Article 11 states that the request for protection shall be made by intelligence units. It is not clearly stated which intelligence unit. In this case, technically all intelligence units can make this proposal. In practice, the police intelligence branch in each province carry out this task. There is not a single protection request sample made by the Department of Intelligence to the provincial protection commissions. Trabzon Intelligence Branch sent a letter to Istanbul and informed them of Hrant Dink's life-threatening situation. In this case, the unit that would bring the matter to the provincial protection commission is the Istanbul Intelligence Branch . However, Ahmet İlhan Guler, the Chief of the Istanbul Intelligence Branch, argued that they did not have the authority to make a protection request and that, according to the "target persons programme" of the Department of Intelligence, this request should be made by the Department of Intelligence.
What is the Target Persons Programme and what does it do?
The Target Persons Programme is an archive programme implemented by the Department of Intelligence with an instruction. Accordingly, the intelligence branch of a province is prohibited from directly accessing the IDP (Intelligence Evaluation Project) digital system of the Department of Intelligence for persons who have become targets of terrorist organisations. The reason is that there cannot be more than one file about a person. Provincial Intelligence Branches will send the information in a written communication and the Department of Intelligence will enter the data into the "target persons" programme. In addition, if the provincial protection commission requests information about the person requesting protection within the scope of Article 10 of the regulation, this information will be provided by the Department of Intelligence. Because with the information coming from all provinces, comprehensive, non-repetitive and source-specific information will be transmitted to the protection commissions in a healthier way. Therefore, this programme does not remove the obligation of provincial intelligence branches to submit requests for the protection of persons to provincial protection commissions. In fact, the regulation describing the protection procedure is higher than the instruction in the hierarchy of the norms. It is obligatory to comply with it. The ultimate aim of the Target Persons Programme is to provide sound information to the commissions requesting information.
In conclusion, the person who should have informed the provincial protection commission that Hrant Dink's life was in danger and needed to be protected was Ahmet İlhan Guler, the Chief of the Istanbul Intelligence Branch.
Orhan Pamuk and Yaşar Kemal given protection
Immediately after the murder of Hrant Dink, the Istanbul Intelligence Branch wrote to the provincial protection commission to provide protection for writers Orhan Pamuk and Yaşar Kemal. Accordingly, the protection was given to the police officers. It clearly shows that the Provincial Intelligence Branch can directly submit protection requests to the protection commissions. Ahmet İlhan Guler's defence is officially invalid.
What does the court say?
The court assessed Ahmet İlhan Guler and Istanbul Police Chief Celalettin Cerrah as "no fault attributable to the defendant could be found, except for the similarities with the protection procedures for the writers Orhan Pamuk and Yaşar Kemal, which can only be characterised as neglect of duty within the scope of TPC 257".
Conclusion:
- The negligence of Ahmet İlhan Guler, who knew of the threat to Hrant Dink's life and did not inform the protection commission about it, was deemed by the court to be only negligence of duty, and the defendant was not sentenced since this offence is also time-barred.
- However, the court imposed an obligation on the Directorate of Intelligence to write to the provincial protection commission and request protection, which had never been done before, and stated that it had a responsibility. The same court that assessed negligence of duty for Ahmet İlhan Guler sentenced Department of Intelligence officers Ramazan Akyürek and Ali Fuat Yılmazer on the charge of Voluntary Manslaughter."
No protection for Dink
The negligence of the Istanbul Police Department officers who did not propose a protection order when there were dozens of threats against Hrant Dink was deemed to be a simple breach of duty and they were not sentenced.
Failure to follow up the subject after the communication dated 17 February 2006
The court, without investigating the matter at all, stated that the Istanbul intelligence branch officers, who were found by the inspectors to have not done sufficient work in accordance with the communication dated 17 February 2006, had carried out sufficient work .
In accordance with the communication dated 17 February 2006 sent by the Trabzon Intelligence Branch to the Istanbul Police, no investigation was carried out by the Istanbul Police Department. However, a retrospective investigation report was prepared immediately after the murder. Branch Chief Ahmet İlhan Guler firstly defended that the text was ambiguous and then claimed that they had done what was requested of them in the text and that this was sufficient.
The research carried out by Istanbul Intelligence
On 17 February 2006, Istanbul Police received a communication informing them that Yasin Hayal was going to carry out a sound-making action against Hrant Dink, which included a telephone number and an address belonging to Osman Hayal. Commissioner Volkan Altunbulak, an Istanbul Intelligence officer, said that he had checked the phone number through the IDP system. The log records of the IDP system of the Department of Intelligence were analysed by the inspectors and it was found that there was no such query record.
On 24 February 2006, it was claimed that a research was carried out at the address mentioned in the communication and it was determined that Osman Hayal was not present there. It was said that an investigation report was prepared as a result of this research. However, in the detailed examination conducted by the inspectors, it was determined that this investigation was not done on 24 February 2006 but after the murder and that the document issued was dated retrospectively after the murder.
Inspectors' findings
"The Istanbul Intelligence Branch made investigations on suspicions that the investigation report prepared by police officers Bahadır Tekin and Özcan Özkan based on the information stated in the letter from Trabzon was not dated 24 February 2006, as it was written on the report, but was prepared after the murder in order to avoid responsibility. a) Although the report was initialed in hierarchical order, it was observed that an intermediate level supervisor, Superintendent İbrahim Şevki Eldivan, did not initial this report without any official excuse. It is among the possibilities that the reason for this is that the report was prepared on the date of the murder and İbrahim Şevki Eldivan was on duty abroad at that time. b) It has been determined that 65 of the 66 investigation reports prepared by police officer Bahadır Tekin between 1 November 2005 and 31 December 2006 were saved in the archive programme named VADI used in the Istanbul intelligence branch, only the report dated 24 February 2006, which is the subject of the incident, was not saved. c) Although 65 of the 66 investigation reports prepared by police officer Bahadır Tekin were not initialed, it is observed that only the report dated 24 February 2006, which is the subject of the incident, was initialed by the line supervisors. d) during the signing of the relevant report by the superiors from the police officer to the branch manager, İbrahim Pala, the intermediate level police chief, made a note on the report as an order to conduct an investigation, and then the report was presented to Ahmet ilhan Güler, the branch chief, and it was found that it was not usual for such a statement to be written on the report presented to the superior. e) It has been determined that between 1 November 2005 and 31 December 2006, Bahadır Tekin, Özcan Özkan and Kahraman Küllücek worked together as a team in most investigations, but the report dated 24 February 2006, which is the subject of the incident, does not bear the signature of Kahraman Küllücek. In the statements taken, the reasons why Kahraman Küllücek did not participate in this investigation were not concretely revealed. Even if these reasons alone are not sufficient to form an opinion, taken together they strengthen the suspicion that the report was prepared after the murder.
The possibility that on 24 February 2006, police officers Bahadır Tekin and Özcan Özkan may have carried out a search on the address in Ümraniye where Osman Hayal may have worked, as alleged, after the murder has been examined. Accordingly, it was determined that the police officers concerned were on another surveillance mission in the Fatih/Istanbul area from 09:30 in the morning until 01:00 at night on 24 February 2006. The Istanbul intelligence officers whose statements were taken stated that the investigation on the Ümraniye side was carried out before 9:30 a.m. and that they then moved to the Fatih area. It is understood that it is very unlikely that police officers, whose residence addresses are on the European side of Istanbul, would have travelled to Ümraniye in early morning Istanbul traffic, conducted an investigation and returned to the Fatih area before 09:30.
The date on which Volkan Altunbulak says that he gave the order for the investigation contradicts the date on which Bahadır Tekin, who is alleged to have carried out the investigation, says that he received the order."
What does the court say?
The court acquitted Ahmet İlhan Güler on the grounds that "the communication dated 17 February 2006 with the content of "sound-making action" was within the scope of Yasin Hayal and his brother Osman Hayal, that Yasin was not in Istanbul on that date, that Osman Hayal's address could not be determined during the investigation, and that the necessary investigation was carried out in line with the information limited to the content of the communication".
In the section where the court evaluated the evidence, the court did not take into account any of the conclusions of the analyses made by the inspectors. It accepted that the text contains ambiguous statements. It did not question the authenticity of the work carried out at the address mentioned in the communication and the report prepared afterwards. It is understood from this that the court covered up the issues without going into details in order to acquit the officers of the Istanbul Police Department. Lieutenant Altunbulak, who is alleged to have carried out the work at the Istanbul Police Department, testified as a witness in the case, not as a defendant.
On 8 April 2006, Trabzon Police turned the information obtained from the interview with Erhan Tuncel into an F4 news report and sent it only to the Department of Intelligence unlike the previous letter. In this letter, it was stated that Yasin Hayal was tried to be dissuaded from the action. Engin Dinç stated in his testimony that the action was still in the idea phase until June 2006 and that there was nothing else to do about it.
The last information received by the Department of Intelligence on the subject is the F4 report dated 8 April 2006 in which Yasin Hayal was tried to be dissuaded from the action.
Conclusion :
- The Court stated that the Istanbul Police Department had done all that was necessary and sufficient. Trabzon Intelligence Branch had done its part until June 2006. The officials of the Department of Intelligence, who received the last news on the subject in April 2006, were penalised on the grounds of why they did not coordinate the work of the provinces.
- For coordination to take place, the work of the provinces must be insufficient and they must not be aware of each other. First, the court deemed the work of the provinces sufficient. Secondly, since Trabzon Police notified Istanbul Police Department in writing and Lieutenant Volkan Altunbulak in Istanbul called Lieutenant Özkan Mumcu in Trabzon Intelligence, the provinces were aware of each other.
- Despite these facts, the court, with a premeditated approach, sentenced only the officers of the Department of Intelligence.