Former police chief blames Gülenist officers for Dink's murder

Celalettin Cerrah, who was the police chief of Istanbul when the prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was gunned down, has claimed he was unaware of a threat against Dink and blamed police officers linked to the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) for not informing him about a murder plot.

Cerrah, who was released pending trial in earlier hearings, told an Istanbul court on Friday that he was not notified, neither before nor after the 2007 murder, that there had been a plot against Dink, who was editor-in-chief of Agos weekly. He said Ramazan Akyürek, the former head of police intelligence who was jailed in the murder case, told him he had no knowledge of a murder plot after Dink was killed in broad daylight in Istanbul by 17-year-old Ogün Samast, despite intelligence reports from police in Trabzon, the hometown of Samast.

Akyürek, along with Ali Fuat Yılmazer, another police chief, are both accused of having affiliations with FETÖ, which allegedly sought to blame the murder on a gang it made up in order to jail its critics with falsified charges brought about by infiltrators in police and judiciary.

Cerrah faces charges of "official misconduct" in the case where 35 defendants are standing trial for the murder and negligence, from bureaucrats and police officers to former police informants. The former police chief said he was not instructed by his superiors to provide police protection to Dink, who constantly received death threats especially from ultra-nationalists angered at his discourse promoting an end to hostilities between Turkey and Armenia. He said the Trabzon police directorate and intelligence department were aware of the murder plot and prepared an intelligence report on the issue in 2006 but the report was not handed to him before the murder.

Gülenist links and allegations of a cover-up in the case were under the spotlight after 2013 coup attempts by Gülenist prosecutors and police. An Istanbul court reopened the case and the subsequent legal process saw former police chiefs detained for negligence and cover-ups.

Most recently, several gendarmerie intelligence officers were arrested for negligence. The gendarmerie's role in the alleged cover-up has never been investigated thoroughly, according to lawyers of the Dink family, after photos showing several gendarmerie intelligence officers at the crime scene shortly before the killing were recently published by media outlets.