BIAnet.org, Turkey
Jan 19 2015
Murathan Mungan’s Hrant Dink Memorial Speech
On the 8th anniversary of Hrant Dink’s assassination, poet and
playwright Murathan Mungan spoke to the crowd gathered for the
commemoration ceremony.
Ä°stanbul – BIA News Desk 19 January 2015, Monday 16:07
On the 8th anniversary of Hrant Dink’s assassination, poet and
playwright Murathan Mungan spoke to the crowd gathered for the
commemoration ceremony.
Below is the full text of Murathan Mungan’s speech:
Hello friends, Hrant Dink’s dear family and friends, all those who who
uphold truth and justice, I greet you all with deep affection and
respect.
We are assembled here once again for Hrant Dink, as we have done for
the last eight years on the 19th of January, for Hrant Dink who became
the son of millions of hearts after his death… `The Largest
Organisation Behind the Murder’ was the title of a piece I had written
in 2007 immediately after he was murdered, it begins like this:
`There are times when one remains speechless in the face of so much to
be said. You choke, unable to utter a single sound. The silence of
being right is unlike other silences; its knot is not easily undone.
(…) This death which was tragic and hurtful enough in and of itself,
was also devastating with what it chillingly brought back from recent
history, from revived memories. Each new death, brings back to life
other deaths with the same pain felt on the first day of those deaths.
No matter how many books you may have written, it is at moments like
these that you remain speechless.’
Today I will begin speaking from where I left off then: in this
country where all forms of speechlessness exist, those who died, who
were killed, who were massacred gave their lives so that we who remain
would be able to say a few words more after them. So that the locks on
our tongues could be broken, so that the burning truths which have
kept us speechles would not devastate us even more… Those few words
more which have remained locked up in history and which have made
their way in time for so long, with so many losses and so many
deaths… more than anything, we owe those few words more to them, to
their memory. Repressive regimes know that fear is contagious, this is
why they try to keep people’s fears alive. What they don’t know is
that courage too is contagious. This is why we need to look into the
eyes of life and the world, and speak with courage. Those words belong
to no one else but us! We must never forget that.
Eight long years have gone by since Hrant Dink was killed. Babies born
then have learned to speak, to read and write. The dead body of Hrant
Dink, however, still lies spread on this sidewalk as the victim of a
murder, the true story of which has still not been brought to light.
Those who leave the world in desolation with their loss, multply life
with their memories and with what they have entrusted us… And we who
are watching over that entrusted legacy have been meeting here for the
last eight years to voice our quest for justice and truth, to cry out
that we wil not abandon Hrant’s dead body to the ruthless hands of
oblivion.
We also want to make it clear that we will not abandon the Hrant Dink
murder to the designs of those who try to instrumentalise this murder
for their own political projects. So much was said and written during
these eight years while justice remained frozen in its steps. Perhaps
those words have thinned out with time, but the pain has not. The
pangs of a non-executed justice continue to throb in our hearts, they
continue to wring our consciences and to hurt our minds. Whatsmore,
with each new victim whose names are uncountable here, with each new
death since that day, Hrant Dink is slain once again and killed on
this sidewalk. When justice remains undone, it multiplies its
murderers and its victims. That is what’s happening once more. For
even if the fingers drawing the trigger may change, the largest
organisation behind the murder remains the same. The unchanging
ominous truth of this country where so many murders are classified as
`perpetrator unknown’ but whose perpetrators are `obvious’, forces us
to utter these same words over and over again. Even if governments and
the masks of those in power change, the hands of the unchanging
despotic central state tradition keep staging the same murky game each
time. Those who carried out the Dersim carnage in 1938 and the MaraÃ…?
massacre in 1978, those who instigated the 6-7 September events in
1955, those who burned alive the demonstrators seeking refuge in the
Madımak Hotel in 1993, those who bombed Roboski in 2011 are all the
same, and so is their mindset. Those who have wrought the hearts of
those Saturday mothers kneeling on the sidewalks of Galatasaray for
more than 500 weeks now, are also the same. We have been waiting for
justice in a country where a party whose name includes the word
`justice’ has been in power for twelve years. But justice does not
come!
Friends, people in this country do not want only their friends to be
like themselves, but also their enemies. They want their enemies to
resemble them so that they can recognise and know who and what they
are fighting against. Those who resemble one another recognise each
other’s arms, wounds, tricks and hatreds. Love can be faked, but not
hatred. Hrant Dink, however, did not resemble them. For he spoke in a
Turkish and in an Armenian which were unknown to them. As one who
firmly believed in the equality and brotherhood of all peoples, he
spoke in the language of peace. Not the words of a kind of peace to
flap one’s jaws with empty wishes, but with the words of a longing for
peace which he hoped would be real, true and enduring… His
dictionary did not include words dripping with blood, he spoke not to
revive hatred but to refresh memories. He called on people not to
fuel their rancour, not to settle accounts, not to seek revenge, but
to face up to their past, to their present and to themselves. He was
opposed to all the policies condemning Turks and Armenians to act like
`eternal enemies’, trapped in a spiral of hatred. He spoke a language
far removed from theirs which branded `the other’ with words of
exclusion, which demonised and turned the `other’ into an enemy. To
them, his was a foreign language they had never known, did not want to
know or learn. This is why in their eyes Hrant Dink was the `other’
with his Armenianness, and a `foreigner’ with his language. What they
wanted to kill, alongside Hrant Dink, was precisely this language.
They could never bring themselves to accept this language of peace,
this humanistic language inviting the world to brotherhood… The
language which we need perhaps more than ever today.
Friends, there is a long list of murders which can be dated all the
way back to before the 1908 Second Constitution, murders committed in
an organised, premeditated manner against journalists where the
murderers would add a new notch to their guns with each new execution.
Hrant Dink was 62nd on this long list to have become victim of such a
political murder. In the country’s `Official History Agenda’ where
almost every page includes a political murder, a massacre or a mass
killing, his destiny was marked on the 19th of January 2007, making
him the 62nd person who paid the price of his words and his conscience
with his life…
This is why we need to tell Hrant Dink’s story once again, to new
generations who have grown up in these last eight years as well as to
refresh some blurred memories. He was not only the spokesperson for
the Armenian people but the voice of all Turkey. The voice of all
those who are repressed, excluded and exploited. If he were with us
today he would have been in our ranks in the Gezi Resistance and stood
side by side with the most desolate, most forelorn people of the
Middle East, the Yezidis who have been massacred 76 times throughout
history. As a person who remained loyal to his values and to himself
all his life, Hrant Dink changed so many things in this country with
his reconciliatory but uncompromising stand. Even his death taught us
so much. He spoke what he thought was right and defended what he
believed in, without trying to please or win the favour of any group
or of those wielding power. His struggle, like that of so many of his
kind, is not one to come to a halt with his death.The crowds gathered
here and everywhere are ample proof of this.
The peoples of this part of the world have paved their way through a
complex, multi-layered past which cannot be elucidated with simplistic
analyses or slipshod assessments. They have gone through so many
stories lost in the labyrinth of history. This is why Hrant Dink
believed there was a need for a new language to resolve the Armenian
question and a new attitude going beyond the stereotyped discourse of
both sides. He believed that with time the peoples of these lands
could resolve this question in a peaceful way by talking about it in
all its aspects with each other, by getting to know one another, by
listening to one another’s stories, by understanding one another’s
sufferings, by coming closer and touching one another. He believed in
the need for dialogue between the memories and memory of both
communities. He hoped in this way that official memory would finally
be replaced by civil memory. He believed that this platform of
dialogue, to be elaborated by the peoples themselves, would be the
instrument to do away with the trump card of the Armenian question,
used by imperial forces in international spheres against Turkey. This
why one of Hrant Dink’s dreams was the opening of borders between
Armenia and Turkey to allow for the two peoples to commingle. Friends,
we should own up to not only the memory of our lost loved ones, but
also to their dreams. And if that border were to be opened today, it
would mean opening the door to so many other things. The opening of
that border will scatter the heavy fog lurking over the Ararat
Mountain for the last century. The opening of that border would so
much become the year 2015.
Friends, as many of you know so well, behind every denial in these
lands lie mass graves, be they dug long ago or recently. The eighth
year of Hrant Dink’s murder coincides, as you also know very well,
with the centenary of the 1915 Armenian genocide. The denial of the
Armenian genocide is Turkey’s 100 years-long solitude. Its solitude in
history, in memories, in minds, in consciences and in the world.
Turkey’s 100 years-long solitude should finally come to an end. This
country should come to terms with its history without fearing the
ghosts of the past, acknowledge its responsibility for what happened
in the past and free itself from the devastating weight of this dark
legacy. It should desire to do so not because of the reproval of the
world or to seek approval from others, but for its own good. This is
also a means for this society to free itself from remaining a
spectator to so many murders committed in the past and up to our day.
For we know well that struggle is needed not against peoples, not
against nations, but against mentalities. For a very long time now,
social polarisation is being systematically and increasingly
instigated in this country. Enmity is fueled and those in government
are the very provocators of violence. In this political atmosphere,
more like a twilight zone, Turkey is almost being dragged back step by
step to its belated rendezvous with the Generals Enver Pasha and Talat
Pasha. The motherland they claim `indivisible from Edirne to Ardahan’
has been and is still being shattered into pieces from Susurluk to
Roboski.
This is why we who have been raising our voices for Hrant, for
justice, no longer want a caricature of democracy, but democracy
itself. We urgently demand democracy and unconditional freedom of
expression. We do not want the sham democracy of obscurantist tricks
staged behind closed doors, but a democracy of daylight. We want a
democracy which makes no concessions on secularism. We want to live
in a society where no one is thirsting for the blood of others, where
we can live without being or making victims. We want to live in a
country where women are not murdered, where trans individuals and gays
are not killed, where children are not massacred by government bullets
almost every day. We want to live in peace, brotherhood and solidarity
in a society where all kinds of ethnic, cultural, religious or
gender-based discrimination have been done away with, where no one
interferes in one another’s lifestyle, language, religion, confession,
beliefs or non-beliefs, where everyone enjoys their rights as equal
citizens, where citizens have attained democratic maturity. We want to
live as people who respect the right to life of everyone and of every
living being, of trees, of water, of parks, of woods and of forests .
We want to live our lives as a multi-lingual, multi-cultural,
multi-coloured people. We are unconditionally opposed to all forms of
tutelage and we do not want to have to make a choice between the
shoulder straps of the 12 March, 12 September coups and a moderate
vindictiveness, a tie-wearing bigotry.
If we stand here today to say `Je suis Charlie Hebdo’ in defense of
the freedom of the press, we do so, unlike some others, with the clear
conscience of those who took to the streets in protest when the `Ã-zgür
Ã`lke’ (Free Country) newspaper was bombed in Istanbul in 1994.
Friends, with Hrant Dink’s death this country not only lost a valued
son, it also lost one of its eminent journalists. At a time when
journalism is losing its dignity in great measure, his loss and the
loss of other journalists like him is bitterly felt. This in itself is
reason enough for us to own up to Hrant Dink’s fourth child, the
newspaper `AGOS’ and its legacy.
I sincerely wish that the truths for which Hrant Dink and others like
him laid down their lives will, in a not too distant future, become
ordinary realities not even worth mentioning in a democracy bathing in
daylight, in a society living together in peace!
I also wish that justice will come about in a near future and that
those who will reassemble here in coming years will do so not to seek
justice and rights which remain in waiting, but only in remembrance of
Hrant and of memories of him.
In concluding my words I would like to lovingly embrace all members of
the Dink family, and greet you all once again with deep affection and
respect.
http://www.bianet.org/english/minorities/161640-full-text-murathan-mungan-s-hrant-dink-memorial-speech