The police launched a probe and the government vowed not to tolerate gangs within security organizations after Turkish media published scandalous images showing members of security forces posing for pictures with the alleged murderer of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink after his arrest.

Video footage of 17-year-old Ogün Samast, the suspected murderer of Dink, posing in front of a Turkish flag and holding another flag next to security officials sent shockwaves across Turkey when it was first broadcast on private Turkish television, TGRT, on Thursday night.

The Turkish press was outraged yesterday, describing the footage as scandalous and saying it was as appalling as the murder of Dink on Jan. 19. Dink was gunned down outside his office in broad daylight, and Samast reportedly told the police that he killed Dink because he had said "Turkish blood is dirty."

Samast was seen in the video holding out a Turkish flag and posing with officers, some of them in uniform. Behind Samast was a poster with another Turkish flag carrying the words of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the revered founder of modern Turkey: "The nation's land is sacred. It cannot be left to fate." A voice in the video can be heard asking if the quote on the poster can be arranged above the suspect's head. Someone also tells Samast to fix his hair.

Blasting the episode, daily Sabah said in its headline: "Shoulder to shoulder with the triggerman: suspected killer Samast was given the hero treatment. "A kiss on the forehead is the only thing the murderer was not given," growled daily Radikal. "This is the picture of the mindset that killed Dink."

“We are in an effort to prevent such formations and attempts to set up gangs in violation of the supremacy of law,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said in response to questions over the footage. But when reminded of growing calls for resignation of senior officials, including Interior Minister Abdülkadir Aksu over the way the murder case has been handled, Erdoğan was cautious, saying such concepts should not be watered down.

The police launched a probe after the leaking of the footage. "The pictures were shown on television in the evening and inspectors will clarify who took the pictures and why. We in the police will do everything necessary," police spokesman İsmail Çalışkan told a weekly news conference. "Whoever is responsible will be given the appropriate punishment."

The episode comes amid heightened debates over "deep state," the code for shadowy ultranationalist elements in the security forces, ready, if need be, to act outside the law. Authorities have been accused of failing to act on warnings that ultranationalists planned to murder Dink. Last week, the Interior Ministry dismissed the police chief and governor of Trabzon and sent prosecutors to investigate whether local authorities were at fault.

The Dink murder case also raised possibilities that the police and the Gendarmerie Command, attached to the General Staff, could be at odds over the case.

Earlier in the day, the gendarmerie released a statement, denying reports the footage was shot at one of their offices in Samsun, the city where Samast was arrested after a nationwide manhunt. It said the footage was shot in a police station cafeteria and angrily blamed its leakage to the media as a "purposeful act."

"The military police personnel seen in the images were personnel assigned to hand over the suspect to the police," the gendarmerie statement said. Some of the security personnel were wearing gendarmerie uniforms while others were in police uniforms.

Asked whether there was tension between the gendarmerie and the police, Erdoğan said there could be "ill-intentioned people who do not respect this country's values" in every organization and added that it was important to get the state organizations of such elements.

"It needs to be emphasized that no one should be engaged in efforts to pit our institutions against each other," he told reporters in İstanbul. Erdoğan has already acknowledged that the "deep state" has operated in Turkey since Ottoman times and said Turkey has paid a heavy price for not dismantling it.