Outrage at the murder of the Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink deepened yesterday after the media showed images of the teenage murder suspect posing with the Turkish flag and security officials after his arrest.
The government launched an inquiry into the footage, which newspapers denounced as "hero treatment" of the 17-year-old suspect.
Ogun Samast confessed to the January 19 killing of Dink, a 52-year-old journalist who had angered Turkish nationalists with assertions that the mass killings of Armenians around the time of the first world war amounted to genocide.
Article continues
The images showed Mr Samast holding a Turkish flag and posing with officers, some in uniform, shortly after his arrest on January 21. Behind him a poster carries the words of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey: "The nation's land is sacred. It cannot be left to fate."
The Turkish media was outraged. "Shoulder to shoulder with the triggerman: suspected killer Samast was given the hero treatment," the Sabah daily reported on its front page.
Ismet Berkan, the editor-in-chief of liberal newspaper Radikal, said the release of the video images was like killing Dink a second time and showed nationalism in Turkey was on the rise.
Later Friday, the state-owned Anatolia news agency reported that four police officers in Samsun, where the photographs were taken, had been dismissed and four military police had been moved to other assignments.
It was not clear whether the eight officers were the ones who posed with Mr Samast.
Initial reports said the photographs were taken in a military police office at the bus station where Mr Samast was captured, but military police said they were taken at a police station nearby. A statement urged the media to be cautious in publicising "attempts aimed at fraying the Turkish armed forces" and expressed concern about the motives of those who leaked the images.
"We in the police will do everything necessary," national police spokesman Ismail Caliskan promised at a news conference. "Whoever is responsible will be given the appropriate punishment."
