On Tuesday June 1st, Turkey accused Israel of state-sponsored terrorism while describing Monday morning’s Israeli attack on a fleet of ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza.

 

“This action, totally contrary to the principles of international law, is inhumane state terrorism. No one should think we will keep quiet in the face of this,” Erdogan said. He added that this attack openly and in a clear way displayed that Israel does not want peace in the region.

 

A few days later, on June 3 2010, A Roman Catholic bishop was stabbed to death in southern Turkey, a day before he was scheduled to leave for Cyprus to meet with the pope, officials and reports said. Luigi Padovese, 63, the apostolic vicar in Anatolia, was attacked outside his home in the Mediterranean port of Iskenderun. The following day, on June 4 2010, Today's Zaman, one of two English-language dailies based in Turkey published the article mentioned below on death of Hakan Karadağ, the lawyer of Hrant Dink. Dink was a Turkish Armenian editor, journalist, columnist and editor-in-chief of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos. He was best known for advocating Turkish-Armenian reconciliation, human and minority rights in Turkey; and was critical of Turkey's denial of the Armenian Genocide. He was prosecuted three times for denigrating Turkishness, while receiving numerous death threats from Turkish nationalists. Dink was assassinated in Istanbul in January 2007, by Ogün Samast, a 17-year old Turkish nationalist.

 

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A lawyer for the co-plaintiff in the trial over Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink's murder was found dead in his İstanbul apartment in an apparent suicide yesterday. No official report on the cause of death of Hakan Karadağ has yet been released.

 

Karadağ's body was taken from his house in Cihangir to the Council of Forensic Medicine (ATK) for an autopsy. Ogün Samast, an ultranationalist teenager and prime suspect in the Dink murder trial, had threatened Karadağ in the courtroom during one of the hearings. According to initial reports, Karadağ's girlfriend, with whom he shared the apartment, discovered the body when she walked into the apartment. Reports said she found Karadağ's body hanging from the ceiling. Police sent the body to the ATK morgue after conducting an investigation of the scene.

 

Relatives of Karadağ traveled to the ATK in the afternoon, and told press they were in a state of disbelief over the alleged suicide. Uncle Habip Karadağ told reporters: “I just saw him yesterday; he did not have any suicidal issues. He said he had a case that he had to attend to and left saying, ‘Hope to see you in the afternoon'.” Karadağ was the lawyer of a co-plaintiff in the Dink assassination trial.

 

Samast had said to Karadağ in the courtroom, “You’d better visit the prison one day,” his remark accompanied by a threatening hand gesture. Karadağ filed an official complaint with the judge to which Samast objected, saying he had no intention to threaten him and had only warned Karadağ not to insult him.

 

The first state official to make a statement on Karadağ’s death was Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç, who was notified of the news by journalists only minutes after Karadağ’s body was found. “It is a most saddening incident. The case’s relationship to Hrant Dink makes us all wonder. Sometimes such things occur when an important issue is on the agenda. Perhaps this was done ahead of the referendum with the intent of bringing such matters into the limelight or to increase concerns about terrorism. It should be viewed from all angles,” he said.

 

Dink was fatally shot by Samast outside the Agos weekly in 2007, but the masterminds of the assassination have still not been found. Three years after his death, Dink’s family and friends and rights organizations continue to voice anger that the mystery surrounding the the journalist’s murder has yet to be unraveled.

 

Lawyers representing the co-plaintiffs in the Dink trial have long alleged that the murder was the doing of Ergenekon, a clandestine gang charged with plotting to overthrow the government. Dink family lawyers have also petitioned the 14th High Criminal Court to contact the prosecutors investigating Ergenekon to request a copy of documents that describe the organization’s plots against religious minorities in Turkey. Such a document, called the Cage Operation Action Plan, was found last November during a police raid on the office of retired Maj. Levent Bektaş, a suspect in the Ergenekon investigation. This document speaks of Dink’s killing as an “operation.”