My column in Gulan this week:

http://www.gulan-media.com/h620/g31.pdf

and the same text in English:

Is Turkey turning back to the 1990s?

Last December European Union put on ice the membership negotiations with
Turkey. This is an important turning point in the political development in
Turkey. Is the country moving towards democracy and co-operation or
nationalism and isolation?

The murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was a shock and a
worrying sign how the future might be in Turkey. Is Turkey turning back to
the athmosphere of early 1990s when political murders and disappearances of
activists were every day life?

Public reaction against the murder of Hrant Dink was strong in Turkey.
Everybody condemned it. This is good sign. Despite the majority of Turkish
people are not actively working for the abrogation of the militaristic
system they neither want to return back to the dark period of last decade.
During those days many journalists, especially Kurdish ones, were murdered.
Their murderers were never found.

Police caught quikly the shooter of Hrant Dink. This is different than the
murders of journalists fifteen years ago. The shooting of Hrant Dink has
similar characters than some honour killings where police has caught the
murderer in Turkey. Often they have turned out to be boys who are under eighteen and
get only a small penalty because of their age.

The big test for Turkey is whether the real forces behind the seventeen
years old shooter of Hrant Dink will be found. In Susurluk accident and
Semdinli bomb attack there was no in-depth survey about the real forces
involved in the scandals. Who had protected Abdullah Catli? Who planned a
serie of bomb attacks in Hakkari province in autumn 2005?

We do not know. First Turkish mass media covered eagerly the cases but
little by little public discussion about these topics died away. It is easy
to predict that the same will happen again. Picture of Dink's murder will
remain unclear and the real criminals behind the act will not be in the
court.

Still I am hopeful that Turkey will not return back to the dark days of
early 1990s. Maybe the Republic of Turkey has not changed from those days
but the world around it is different. Also the Kurdish and Armenian
communities in Turkey are now much stronger than fifteen years ago. They
have lots of contacts abroad.

World is following how Turkish police and court solve this murder case. And
more than that: how the freedom of expression develops in Turkey.

The situation is alarming as long as police stations and courts are places
where the limits of journalism are counted. If this is not changing Turkey
can say bye-bye to dreams about European Union.