Armenian Missionary Association of America
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AMAA Executive Director Zaven Khanjian Delivers Hrant Dink Lecture
Paramus, NJ – As part of the Armenian Missionary Association of
America’s commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian
Genocide, AMAA Executive Director and CEO Zaven Khanjian delivered a
memorial lecture about the life of Hrant Dink at the Armenian
Presbyterian Church in Paramus, New Jersey on January 31.
`Long before there was Je suis Charlie there was the slogan, We are
all Armenian. We are all Hrant Dink,’ Mr. Khanjian told a large and
attentive audience, who had braved adverse winter weather to attend
the presentation. Mr. Khanjian and his wife Sona befriended Hrant
Dink shortly before Dink’s death, and the lecture included not just a
witness to the historical record, but personal reminiscences as well.
The lecture’s point of departure was an impromptu address Hrant Dink
delivered at the United Armenian Congregational Church (UACC) in
Hollywood, California, just months before Dink’s death. In those
remarks, Hrant Dink recalled his ties to the Armenian Evangelical
movement, and in particular a youth camp in Tuzla, Turkey, that was
dear to him.
Hrant Dink told the UACC audience that as a boy he lived as an orphan
in the `children’s nest’ (Bolso Badanegan Doon) on the bottom floor of
the Armenian Evangelical Church in Gedik Pasa, Istanbul. The
administrator of the orphanage, Hrant Guzelian had a dream of creating
a summer facility where children could enjoy the outdoors and continue
their Bible studies. And so, Guzellian began the Tuzla camp.
But Dink recalled that in those early years, Tuzla was a far cry from
our notion of a vacation camp. Tents were pitched, and at the age of
eight, Hrant Dink along with a dozen other boys were taught
construction skills, and began the hard work of building the facility
that he would later describe as `heaven.’ It was, he said, `an
untouched shore with fine sand and a piece of lake formed from the
sea…a sprinkling of fig and olive trees, and thorny raspberry bushes
along the sides of the ditches.’
Not only would Dink work, learn, and play at the Tuzla camp, but he
eventually met his wife Rakel there, when she was brought to the camp
as a seven-year-old Kurdish Armenian. `We grew up together. We got
married there. Our children were born there.’
But eventually, the Turkish government placed camp director Hrant
Guzelian under arrest, on an accusation that he was `raising Armenian
militants,’ a notion that Dink ridiculed. `None of us was being
raised as Armenian militants,’ he said. But Guzelian’s arrest left
the camp without a leader and the church without a pastor. And so,
every Sunday, Hrant and Rakel Dink would keep the church open: a guard
at the door, Hrant Dink preaching the Bible from the pulpit, and Rakel
and their three children comprising the entire congregation.
Eventually, the Turkish government asserted that title to the Tuzla
land had been granted to the Armenians in error, and evicted the
children’s camp altogether. To illustrate this portion of the
lecture, Zaven Khanjian showed the audience the documentary `Swallow’s
Nest’ by Sehbal Senyrt and Nedim Hazar, in which Hrant Dink is seen
walking through the neglected ruins of the Tuzla camp, the `heaven’ of
his childhood and early adulthood. As he walks, Dink recalls the
injustice of the seizure of the land, and finds in that experience the
roots of his passion for social justice for Turkey’s minority
communities.
Because of his advocacy as a journalist, Hrant Dink was eventually
charged by the Turkish state with a violation of the infamous Article
301, which criminalized offending Turkishness. He was convicted and
given a suspended sentence, but Dink realized that, even if he was not
sentenced to jail, the conviction made him a marked man. He remained
in Turkey, he said, out of respect for the many thousands who
supported him, but he said he lived like a pigeon, `obsessed just as
much [by] what goes on my left, right, front, back. My head is just
as mobile…and just fast enough to turn right away.’
Dink continued, `I may see myself as frightened as a pigeon, but I
know that in this country people do not touch pigeons. Pigeons can
live in cities, even in crowds. A little scared perhaps, but free.’
Tragically, Hrant Dink would not share that freedom. On January 19,
2007, a 17-year-old, Ogun Samast, shot Hrant Dink to death as he left
his newspaper office. The subsequent investigation revealed that
Samast was acting at the behest of members of the so-called `Deep
State,’ ultra-nationalist forces within Turkey, believed to include
officials in government and law enforcement. Those legal proceedings
continue.
In recounting the life of Hrant Dink, Zavan Khanjian emphasized the
values for which Dink lived and died. Those causes included the
Christian faith he learned at Evangelical church, orphanage, and
summer camp; and the inviolable civil rights of all minorities living
in Turkey. Those causes also included a commitment to freedom of
expression, a commitment so absolute that Dink vehemently opposed the
enactment of a statute criminalizing Armenian Genocide denial in
France.
Mr. Khanjian ended on an optimistic note, predicting that the forces
opposed to the truth will eventually be defeated, and expressing his
hope that goodwill – and recognition of the truth of the Armenian
Genocide – will prevail.
From: A. Papazian
www.amaa.org