The case concerning the brutal murder of an 86-year-old Greek Christian citizen of Turkey in 2019 has finally concluded. The court ruled against it being considered a hate crime. It also rejected the intervention of Turkey’s Human Rights Association (IHD) in the case.
The victim, Zafir Pinaris, lived a desolate life on the island of Imbros (Gökçeada). He was found murdered in his home on May 13, with his hands and feet tied. He was tortured to death.
The Independent’s Turkish website reported:
The islanders did his daily chores, and he himself hardly left his home. For the first time, he did not open the door to his neighbor who brought food on May 13, 2019. The neighbor who opened the door found the old man on the ground with his hands tied. The gendarme who came to the house evaluated that Pinaris had died 1 day ago and an investigation was started regarding the murder. After 11 days, the operations [investigations] were concluded. Within the scope of the investigation, 8 people were detained. 5 of them were released, and 3 suspects, Erdoğan Baş, Mete Sarı and Kadir Arslan, were arrested. One of the defendants, Erdoğan Baş, died shortly after being imprisoned.
The lawsuit, which went on for a year and a half, concluded on April 7.
In the case, held at the Çanakkale Courthouse, the court sentenced Kadir Arslan, one of the detained defendants, to an aggravated life sentence for murder by design and to 15 years in prison for looting.
While Mete Sarı was acquitted of the charge of murdering Pinaris by design, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for looting. Arslan and Sarı’s detention was decided to continue. Erdal Baş, who was tried without arrest, was sentenced to 1 year and 6 months for possession of an unlicensed weapon, but was acquitted of concealing the evidence of the crime. Juvenile delinquent A.B. was sentenced to 4 years and 2 months for aiding the looting crime. It was decided that the trials of Erdal Baş and A.B. would continue without arrest.
However, the request for intervention of Turkey’s Human Rights Association (IHD) was rejected by the court. Inci Incesağır, a lawyer with the IHD who followed the case, said the murder was also a hate crime:
The court, however, did not consider it a hate crime. There is an understanding [in Turkey] that ‘If one is Greek, one is definitely very rich and his/her money should belong to “us,” not to the Greek.’ Therefore, we think that this should be considered as a hate murder, but our request for intervention was rejected [by the court].
Incesağır said she believes that Kadir Arslan and Mete Sağır, two of the 5 defendants in the case, directly participated in the crime:
Sarı was acquitted of murder by design. Since our request for intervention was not accepted, we think that the victim’s attorney will appeal.
It was not only Pinaris’s right to life that was taken away by Turks. His hometown, the island of Imbros, was also violated and ethnically cleansed of its indigenous Greek population by Turkish authorities. Imbros was a demographically Greek island until pressures against local Christians were accelerated by the Turkish government during the 1960s.
The 1923 Lausanne Treaty, which recognized the borders and independence of Turkey, established a special status – including the right to a Greek local administration – for the then-Greek-populated Aegean islands, Imbros and Tenedos (Bozcaada). According to the treaty, Greek residents were supposed to be protected by the Turkish government.
However, those provisions of the treaty were never honored by Turkey.
The island’s Turkification happened in “a detailed and carefully designed process,” said a prominent human rights advocate, Ayse Günaysu.
The sense of security, educational rights, language, and economic well-being of the Greek Christians on that island were all targeted systematically.
In 1965, a “semi-open prison” was opened on the island. The inmates were allowed to wander around everywhere on the island, committing violent crimes against the Greek population, such as harassment, rape, arson, attacks on Greek homes, and robbery. In 1991, once the Greek population was reduced to a mere remnant, the prison was closed down. The lands owned by the Greek population and the properties of all Greek foundations began to be confiscated in the 1960s. Greek schools were closed down. The island was then declared a “military zone” in 1970.
While all these policies were implemented, ethnic Turks were settled on the island. Then in 1970, the name of Imbros was changed to “Gökçeada.” According to Günaysu:
The rapid decrease in the Greek resident population and the equally rapid increase in the number of Muslims/Turks clearly reveal the “population engineering” designed by the Turkish state.
Read more about the Turkish campaign against Imbros here.
Imbros is not the only location in Turkey that was cleansed of its indigenous Greek population. For decades, Christians and their cultural heritage all across Asia Minor have been targeted by the Turkish government and the country’s many citizens.
Between 1914 and 1923, Ottoman Turkey under two successive regimes conducted a systematic campaign of extermination against indigenous Greeks of the region. Armenians and Assyrians were also targeted. In 2007, the International Association of Genocide Scholars recognized the violent campaign as genocide.
But systematic discrimination against non-Muslims continued even after Turkey’s founding. The Civil Servants Law of 1926 made it virtually impossible for non-Muslims to work at state institutions. As a result of this law, thousands lost their jobs.
In 1941, Armenian, Assyrian, Greek and Jewish males in Turkey were forced into labor camps. This occurred under a policy referred to as the “conscription of the twenty classes”(“yirmi kur’a nafıa askerleri“). They were forced to work under terrible conditions to construct roads and airports. Some lost their lives to disease and other factors.
In 1942, the Turkish government enacted the Wealth Tax Law (Varlık Vergisi) in order to remove Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks and Jews from the economy. Those who could not pay the tax were sent to labor camps or deported; their properties were seized by the government.
On September 6-7, 1955, the Greeks of Istanbul were the target of a government-led pogrom; Armenians and Jews were also victimized. Turks attacked everything belonging to these minorities: homes, businesses, churches, cemeteries and schools, among others. A British journalist reported that the Greek neighborhoods of Istanbul “looked like the bombed parts of London during the Second World War.” The savagery of the mobs created such an atmosphere of fear that, following the pogrom, tens of thousands of Greeks left Turkey.
In 1964, Greeks in Istanbul — including the disabled, the elderly and the infirm — became victims of a mass expulsion at the hands of the government. The deportees were given twelve hours to leave Turkey and were only permitted to take 20 kilograms (44 lbs.) of possessions and the equivalent of $20 with them, leaving behind the rest of their property, much of which was then confiscated by the Turkish state and private citizens.
The Turkish news website Bianet reported in 2005:
According to church records, only 1,244 Greeks remain in Turkey. They are nervous. Their religious holidays, rites and ceremonies are [considered as scandalous] incidents. Their lives are under surveillance.
In the same report, Mihail Vasiliadis, Editor-in-Chief of the only remaining Greek-language newspaper in Istanbul, Apoyevmatini, said:
We [Greeks in Turkey] have started to go extinct like the Caretta Caretta turtles or northern bald ibis. But unfortunately, the Greeks are seen as more worthless than a turtle, a bird.
Since the early twentieth century, Turkey has been committing a campaign of annihilation against native Greeks. The latest victim is Zafir Pinaris, an elderly, lone man whose only crime was being Greek. His fate was just like the hundreds of thousands of other Greeks that Turkey has killed or forcibly deported for the same reason.
Uzay Bulut is a Turkish journalist and political analyst formerly based in Ankara.
Hoi Polloi says
Genocide, mass expulsion, wealth redistribution, wiping out the native population, settling a violent offenders playground in their midst, torturing and murdering an old man. Not a hate crime when a muslim does it, but thought crimes persecutions for the rest of us. It’s pretty clear now, the genesis and intent of hate crimes legislation.
Barbara says
Centuries ago the Muslims would attack and murder citizens. Now they incorporate subtle genocide so more muslims can invade. This way there is very little opposition.
Hoi Polloi says
Very disturbing, just how little opposition there is.
gregbeetham says
I live for the day when this scum get their just deserts, all of them.
born saturday says
the modern ottomaniac empire chalifate will not stop the genocides it historically considers its duty without much more persuasive means than being funded from china qatar and the eu…… while the psychopath sultan is spiralling out of control there should have been sanctions that bring the economy of the chalifate to its knees, on the contrary terrorism is funded and eu is flooded by savage immigrants that live of the state and pay no taxes creating a black economy and shocking the world with their horific crimes and terrorism…..
Beneath the Veil of Consciousness says
BOYCOTT TURKEY. VISIT GREECE INSTEAD.
GreekEmpress says
+1
And don’t forget to boycott Procter and Gamble products. They have invested millions in Turkey.
gravenimage says
Turkey: 86-year-old Greek man murdered; court rules against ‘hate crime’
While Mete Sarı was acquitted of the charge of murdering Pinaris by design
………………
How do you tie someone up and torture them to death *by accident*? Insanity.
More:
The court, however, did not consider it a hate crime. There is an understanding [in Turkey] that ‘If one is Greek, one is definitely very rich and his/her money should belong to “us,” not to the Greek.’ Therefore, we think that this should be considered as a hate murder, but our request for intervention was rejected [by the court].
………………
This is how pious Muslims think. I read about a case of a Muslim murdering his impoverished Jewish neighbor that was almost identical to this.
OLD GUY says
Only in the eyes of Allah and the muslim.islamic world is torture and murder an acceptable way to get to paradise and don’t forget the 72 VRGINS as a bonus if you die trying.
Crusades Were Right says
In the 11th century AD the Turks arrived in Anatolia as a gigantic horde of Mohammedan invaders, and began a campaign of attacking, raping, murdering, plundering, desecrating and colonizing the homelands of indigenous Christian nations.
If the article above is anything to go by, the “work” of a millennium is just about complete.
“And next?”
SAFI says
Worth keeping in mind how the turkish regime’s international propaganda media like TRT , Anadolu etc love pestering us daily with news about bogus “islamophobic” “hate crimes” like some “stop islamization” graffiti on a wall somewhere in western Europe while completely ignoring real hate crimes in their own country, like the brutal torture and murder of this man…
Also a comment on the historical summary this excellent article offers, notice how Turkey (which actually pretended to be friends with Greece during the Interwar period) simply waited until 1941 when the whole world’s attention was turned to Hitler and Greece came under Nazi and Italian fascist occupation to set in motion its Plan for dealing with the “Remnants of the Sword” (as Erdogan recently branded the country’s few remaining Christians) .. proving the genocidal intentions never went away they just waiting for the right opportunity to finish the job…
gravenimage says
Grimly true.