On December 30, 2022, in broad daylight, academic and former Grey Wolves leader Sinan Ates collapsed after being shot five times at close range on a street in Ankara. His widow, Ayse Ates, and opposition parties denounced an internal score-settling, a political assassination involving the Nationalist Action Party of the MHP, an ally of the AKP in the pro-government coalition.
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With our correspondent in Ankara, Celine Pierre-Magnani
There are few images of dialogue between members of the extreme right and the main opposition party.
But it was Özgür Özel, the leader of the Kemalist CHP party, who stood alongside Sinan Ates’ widow for the first hearing of the trial. In front of the prison gates in Sincanhe denounces a flawed charge which spares the real instigators of the murder.
Fears of political manipulation
” We know the murderer. We have the names of the few lesser-known people who ordered this murder. But the indictment does not look in those directions, it does not go further. We are witnessing a trial whose indictment is half-made, incomplete. ” says Özgür Özel.
The trial of Sinan Ates is also a test for the country’s justice system. Changes in prosecutors that have punctuated the course of the investigation raise fears of internal political manipulation.
Although he received the widow of Sinan Ates, the president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has remained relatively discreet on the issue, an attitude interpreted as distancing himself from his MHP ally. The verdict of the trial could destabilize the government coalition.
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