The outpouring of grief over his death was monumental. Much of the country went into mourning and vast crowds demonstrated solidarity with the fallen journalist. Hrant Dink's funeral may have been the best attended since Ataturk's. The huge city of fifteen million came to a stop, marching on foot to the Armenian church as if it was shifting into a new mode where the lies of its history and sympathy for minorities had finally come calling.

Then the wheels of justice began to grind--or shriek. The police had identified the killer at once from a security camera scanning the street outside the building. He was a young man, twenty or less, wearing a tall white knit cap. He had not hurried from the scene but walked as if under control, removing his silly cap only after he turned the corner to the next block.

The Turkish police are known to be efficient in tracking criminals. One reason is that they spend a lot of time and money infiltrating groups that cause trouble. It was when the police, with the help of the Jandarma (similar to our State Police), caught up to Ogun Samast on a bus headed to his home on the Black Sea Coast, that things began to turn weird. Answers, which in Turkey mean further questions, almost immediately began to tumble forth.

It became quickly clear that Samast was a member of a nationalist gang dedicated to preserving the purity of Turkish politics by murdering the people who call for pluralism. The fact that Samast was only seventeen years old confirmed the suspicions. Gangs like these often use minors to carry out their assassinations, knowing that they can't be brought to proper account under Turkish law. One member of the gang had already been in trouble for bombing a MacDonald's during Ramazan. And it turned out that another gang member was in fact a police informant.

Turks love a conspiracy better than baklava. Rumors of government involvement in the assassination began to circulate, but not in the way we might expect. Turks blamed The Deep State. As they see it, this shadowy entity operates parallel to the Properly Constituted State, sometimes at its bidding and sometimes at cross-purposes. Fanatically nationalistic, and as violent as it it righteous, The Deep State takes upon itself the job of carrying out executions that the law by its effete nature does not allow.

Was that why did the police who captured Samast treated him like a hero, mugging for the video-cam as they had the killer hold up a Turkish flag?

And why didn't the informant in the gang tell the cops what was going on?

Well, he did, but they ignored the warning.

Stayed tuned for THE DEEP STATE, PART II.