Leading Armenian journalist murdered in Istanbul
Sam Knight and agencies
Times Online/UK
January 19, 2007
A prominent newspaper editor and leading figure in Turkey’s Armenian
community has been murdered in Istanbul.
Hrant Dink, a vigorous defender of Armenians who frequently fell foul
of the Government’s free-speech laws and hardline Turkish
nationalists, was shot several times in the neck as he emerged from
the offices of the Agos newspaper in Istanbul this afternoon.
In his final newspaper column Dink, 53, described how his willingness
to criticise the Government and articulate the views of Turkey’s
Armenian community had led to dozens of death threats. He complained
that he had been offered no protection by the police.
"My computer’s memory is loaded with sentences full of hatred and
threats," he wrote. "I am just like a pigeon … I look around to my
left and right, in front and behind me as much as it does. My head is
just as active."
Witnesses and Turkish media reports described the gunman as a young
man, around 18 or 19, wearing denim jacket and a white hat. The
Turkish Prime Minister later said that two men had been arrested over
the shooting and top officials from the Justice Department had been
appointed to investigate.
The killing of Dink, who was convicted last year under laws that
forbid journalists from "insulting Turkish identity", caused the
Turkish stock market to fall. The country’s fractious relationship
with its writers and its past, notably the Armenian genocide that
followed the First World War, is seen as a major obstacle to Turkey’s
eventual admission to the EU.
At a rushed news conference, the Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan,
described the murder as an attack on Turkey’s peace and
stability. Hundreds of bystanders gathered around Dink’s body, which
lay face down and covered by a white sheet, and chanted "the murderer
Government will pay".
Friends of Dink said the writer and editor challenged Turkey’s
reluctance to face up to its past and failure to properly respect its
minority communities. "Hrant was a perfect target for those who want
to obstruct Turkey’s democratisation and its path towards the European
Union," said Aydin Engin, a journalist for Agos, where Dink’s brother
also works.
"This bullet was fired against Turkey… an image has been created
about Turkey that its Armenian citizens have no safety," Taha Akyol,
the editor of CNN Turk.
Dink had been prosecuted several times because of articles published
in Agos, an influential bilingual newspaper that appears in Turkish
and Armenian. He was unafraid to confront the Government with the
history of the Armenian genocide and in late 2005 was charged with
insulting Turkey for referring to the long-held Armenian wish to live
separately from Turks.
Last July, Dink told Reuters that his writings had led to several
death threats but that he refused to go abroad, a decision his friends
spoke of with dismay today.
"I will not leave this country. If I go I would feel I was leaving
alone the people struggling for democracy in this country. It would be
a betrayal of them. I could never do this," he said.
In the end, Dink was convicted of trying to influence his trial by
allowing a series of articles to appear in Agos criticising Turkey’s
penal code. His six-month suspended prison sentence ‘ an unusually
harsh penalty ‘ was then upheld last year by Turkey’s court of appeal,
a verdict that led to condemnation from Brussels. Earlier this month,
he predicted that 2007 would a difficult year, but that he would
survive.
"For me, 2007 is likely to be a hard year. The trials will continue,
new ones will be started. Who knows what other injustices I will be up
against?"