Boston Globe, MA
Jan 24 2007
Tens of thousands mourn ethnic-Armenian editor
Killing triggers soul searching in Turkey
By Yesim Borg and Laura King, Los Angeles Times | January 24, 2007
ISTANBUL — Tens of thousands of mourners wound through the heart of
this ancient city yesterday in the funeral procession for an
ethnic-Armenian journalist whose killing triggered soul searching
over national identity, freedom of expression, and the historical
ghosts that shadow Turkey.
Followed by the largely silent throng, a black hearse slowly bore the
flower-strewn coffin of editor Hrant Dink to an Armenian Orthodox
church, where he was eulogized as a voice of courage and conscience.
A teenage nationalist reportedly has confessed to gunning down the
52-year-old journalist Jan. 19 outside his office.
The extraordinary display of public mourning shut down much of
downtown Istanbul, whose narrow back alleys and wide boulevards are
normally the scene of a raucous commercial free-for-all. Onlookers,
many dabbing their eyes, leaned from balconies and watched from
doorways as the cortege passed by. Some applauded, in the traditional
sign of respect for honored dead.
Dink, a Turkish citizen of Armenian extraction, was best known as an
advocate for the rights of the country’s Armenian minority —
including efforts to win official recognition by Turkey that the
deaths of some 1.5 million Armenians in the final years of the
Ottoman empire constituted the first genocide of the 20th century.
Turkey blames the deaths on fighting, cold, and hunger rather than
any systematic campaign of extermination, a stance that is widely
viewed internationally as an obstacle to its aspirations to join the
European Union.
Scores of Turkish academics, journalists, and novelists, including
Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, have been prosecuted under a provision
known as Article 301, which contains a wide-ranging ban on "insulting
Turkishness." Any public reference to an Armenian genocide, even in
carefully couched language, can result in being hauled into court and
possibly jailed, as Dink was.
Hours before the daylong funeral rites began, mourners gathered
outside the offices of Agos, Dink’s newspaper, whose name refers to
the nurturing of a seed. Many carried placards saying "We are all
Armenians" and "We are all Hrant Dink."
Even among those Turks who believe their country has been unfairly
tarred with genocide allegations, the violent backlash by right-wing
nationalists has prompted profound unease. Many were disturbed by the
young age of the alleged killer, identified by authorities as
17-year-old Ogun Samast, and the fact that he had apparently come
under the sway of nationalist militants.
A mood of quiet desolation pervaded the day’s events. Loudspeakers
played a mournful folk song. At the site of the slaying, his
supporters released white doves.
"I feel like I lost a brother," said Zeynep Catik, a 55-year-old
housewife who joined the funeral procession. "Turkey lost one of its
core values."
The Armenian patriarch, Mesrob II, addressed the mourners, urging
that the 60,000 Armenians living in Turkey be accepted as an integral
part of society.
"We still hope that [Turks] . . . will accept that the Armenians are
Turkish citizens who have been living in this land for thousands of
years, and are not foreigners or potential foes," he said.