HRANT DINK’S “HEIRS” SHOULD BE MORE COHERENT
Maxime Gauin
Journal of Turkish Weekly
Sept 22 2011
Turkey
The “friends of Hrant Dink” sent a letter to Turkish Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The text, as quoted in the Hurriyet Daily News
on September 16, 2011, alleges:
“Our search for justice has been left null and void as [our efforts]
approach their fifth year. The state in its entirety that we have
petitioned saw itself as being close to the murderer.”
The fact that the assassin, Ogun Samast, was quickly arrested and
sentenced to more than 20 years in jail seems irrelevant to the authors
of this letter. The still unresolved cases of political assassinations
in Turkey and in other countries, including old democracies like
France, apparently are not very interesting to them, even as contexts
leading to prudence in their wording and level of allegations.
Such an excessive statement could be attributed, by an uninformed
observer, to the misleading pain of people who have lost a friend
because of a terrorist attack. Unfortunately, in looking more closely,
quite a different picture emerges.
Preliminary remarks
Hrant Dink was assassinated in Ä°stanbul on January 19, 2007. Despite
having been merely the editor-in-chief of a small weekly paper,
Agos, representing only a part of Turkey’s Armenian community (the
daily Jamanak, for instance, has a different stance), Hrant Dink’s
assassination provoked huge reactions and demonstrations in Turkey.
The rejection of the murder was unanimous among Turkey’s main political
parties and other organizations.
Now, let’s look at what happened in Los Angeles on January 28, 1982.
Kemal Arıkan, Consul General of Turkey, was assassinated by Hampig
Sassounian and another, unidentified man. The two perpetrators were
terrorists of the Justice Commandos Against Armenian Genocide (JCAG),
i.e. the terrorist arm of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation
(ARF-Dashnak), the main political party of the Armenian Diaspora
which controls numerous cultural and charitable associations all
over the world, especially in North America, France, Australia,
and the Middle East.
Instead of condemning the assassination, the Armenian community
of California expressed unanimous and unconditional support for
HampigSassounian. It does not mean, of course, that all the Armenians
of California agreed with the murder; but any Armenian who would have
publicly reproved this act would had been purely and simply expelled
from Armenian American cultural and religious life. As the Assembly of
Turkish American Associations (ATAA) documented for the parole hearing
of Mr. Sassounian in 2010, and as I summarized in my previous column
for the JTW, the ARF provides constant and full help to its terrorist,
presenting him as a “martyr,” “hero,” and “example.”
The comparison between the Dink and Arıkan cases can be continued.
Kemal Arıkan’s assassination never provoked the same reactions as the
murder of Hrant Dink in the Western opinion. Despite Kemal Arıkan
having been a diplomat representing an important country, a member
of NATO, there is simply no street, plaque, or any memorial in any
Western country, including the U.S., commemorating his death. There
are several streets named after Hrant-Dink in the West, for instance in
Lyon, France. In this city, the Turkish Consulate was attacked by the
Armenian Secret Army for Liberation of Armenia (ASALA), which killed
two people, on August 5, 1980. No policeman protected the Consulate at
that time. Nothing was inaugurated in Lyon to commemorate the attack.
Prof. Michael M. Gunter, specialist, among other subjects, of Armenian
terrorism, explains even, speaking about himself “this author often
finds sheer of disbelief on the part of the general non-Armenian
public that the phenomenon [Armenian terrorism] even existed”
(Armenian History and the Question of Genocide, New York-London:
Palgrave MacMillan, 2011, p. 72).Despite the JCAG having been directly
subordinate to the ARF’s World Bureau, despite all the legal branches
of the ARF having given unconditional support to the JCAG, the ARF was
never banned by any democratic country. Even the other perpetrator of
Kemal Arıkan’s assassination was not found. The lack of protection
provided by American police to Kemal Arıkan, or later to the honorary
Consul General in Boston Orhan Gunduz who received death threats before
his death, did not incite the police forces to any investigation for
incompetence, still less for complicity. Similarly, the inability of
the police of France, Austria, Belgium, Italy, or Greece to protect
Turkish diplomats and other citizens against Armenian terrorists
was never the target of any internal investigations. There are such
investigations for the Dink case.
The Hrant Dink family, the Hrant Dink Foundation, and other “friends”
were never interested by these cases of Armenian terrorism. Armenia’s
aggression toward Azerbaijan and the Armenian terrorism against this
country are not among the concerns of Hrant Dink’s “heirs.” They are
not even interested by the hundreds of Armenians killed or threatened
to death by Armenian terrorists, since the end of 19th Century.
The active cooperation of Hrant Dink’s “heirs” with Armenian
nationalists
This selective indignation is unfortunately the less serious problem
of internal incoherence raised by the statements and activities of
Hrant Dink’s “heirs.”
On January 17, 2008, for the first anniversary of Hrant Dink’s
assassination, Ochin Tchilinguir, an Agos journalist and “one of the
lawyers of Dink family,” attended an event organized by the Unitary
Committee of Alfortville’s Armenian Associations (CUAA).[1] Alfortville
is a kind of French Glendale or Watertown, for the numeric importance
of its Armenian community. The CUAA is dominated by the ARF, and is
even located in the House of Armenian Culture (MCA), a branch of the
Dashnak Party. Another important component of the CUAA is the Hunchak,
another nationalist party which practiced terrorism–including against
Armenians–during the Ottoman period and supported ASALA during the
1980s. The event was also attended by Ara Krikorian, ex-leader of
the ARF in France and editor in 1981 of a book glorifying the Dashnak
terrorist S. Tehlirian.
It is difficult, for somebody who received a French education,
to refrain from thinking of Francois de La Rochefoucauld’s saying:
“Hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue.”
Another event took place in Arnouville, also a Parisian suburb with
an important Armenian community. The conference was hosted by the
Hrant-Dink school, whose founder denied any connections with the
ultra-nationalist organizations. However, one of the participants
was Alexandre Couyoumjian, member of the bureau of the strongly
nationalist–and above all, anti-Turkish– Coordination Council of
France’s Armenian Associations (CCAF). A lawyer by profession, Mr.
Couyoumjian was one of the supporters of the defunct bill presented
to the French Parliament, which was designed to forbid the “denial”
of the “existence of the Armenian genocide.”[2] Ochin Tchilinguir
also participated. Mr. Tchilinguir saw no contradiction between the
proclaimed goal of Hrant Dink’s “heirs” to fight for the freedom
of expression and cooperating with an activist who fights this very
same freedom. At the time, when the censorship bill was discussed,
Hrant Dink stated that he was ready to go to France and say: “There
was no Armenian genocide.
These examples are by no means isolated or limited to France. Talin
Sucyan, who wrote in Agos from 2007 to 2010 is now a contributor of
the Dashnak Armenian Weekly. During the 1970s and the 1980s, this
newspaper published both the communiqués of the JCAG and inflammatory
articles of its staff, supporting Armenian terrorism. In the 1930s, The
Armenian Weekly (at that time named Hairenik Weekly) unconditionally
supported Nazism and was proud to mention the assassination of numerous
Armenians by the ARF, because they did not want to give money to this
party. The Armenian Weekly also published numerous defamatory attacks
against Archbishop Leon Tourian, who was eventually assassinated by
the ARF in New York on December 24, 1933.
Ms. Sucyan published an article in The Armenian Weekly viciously
attacking Turkey without any evidence. She mentioned a conference of
the Armenian General Benevolence Union (AGBU), which failed to take
place in Jordan.[3] Ms. Sucyan wanted to present a speech on “The
Legacy of Hrant Dink.” The AGBU is a branch of the Ramkavar Party. The
Ramkavar allowed its members to support Armenian terrorists in the
1980s, and as late as 2000, Moorad Mooradian, an important figure
of the Ramkavar, justified the assassination of Turkish diplomats by
Armenian terrorists, and failed to write a single word of criticism
about the other kind of attacks, like the bombing of Orly airport (The
Armenian Mirror-Spectator, March 25, 2000). The Ramkavar-dominated
Armenian Assembly of America (AAA) supported countless anti-Turkish
initiatives since its creation in 1972. The French branches of AGBU
and Ramkavar supported the censorship bill.
Even more strikingly, the widow of Hrant Dink received an award from
Robert Kocharian, at that time President of Armenia.[4] Mr. Kocharian
played a central role in the aggression toward Azerbaijan as well as in
the ethnic cleansing of Azeris. He supported most of the claims of the
Diaspora’s extreme nationalists and attacked even (verbally) the Jews.
These acts of cooperation make even more sense considering that the
Hrant Dink Foundation established in 2010 a “Support Fund for History
Studies” focusing on the “1915 events.” The jury includes the German
sociologist of Kurdish heritage Taner Akcam, whose methods are proven
to be less than scientific (mistranslations, misquotations, use of
fakes, allegations without proof)[5] and who even dared calling the
well documented slaughters of Muslim civilians by Armenian volunteers
of the Russian army “a legend” on PBS, in April 2006. The jury also
includes Raymond Kévorkian and Hans-Lukas Kieser, two authors with a
strongly anti-Turkish bias. There is not any specialist of Ottoman and
Turkish history, not even Hilmar Kaiser, a supporter of the “genocide”
allegation who accepts the debate and recognizes the high scholarship
of Yusuf Halacoglu; Donald Bloxham, who at least admits that there
were actually Armenian insurrectional activities at the beginning
of WWI and that “During the Russian advance into eastern Anatolia at
the beginning of 1916, vengeful Armenian forces […] murdered many
Muslims, as testified to in the British sources;” or Ara Sarafian.
The Silence vis-a-vis Other Attempts of Misuse
In addition to the active and direct participation of the Hrant
Dink Foundation, the Dink family or their friends to the propaganda
allowed, at least by their silence, a recurrent misuse of Hrant
Dink’s assassination by the most radical, anti-Turkish, Armenian
nationalists. In one of its inflammatory articles against Turkey–and
actually, against most of the Turkish people themselves–The Armenian
Weekly (January 27, 2010) concluded “in the memory of Hrant Dink.”[6]
The text is full of praise for the PKK, an old comrade in arms of
the ARF, and the owner of The Armenian Weekly. In reading such absurd
allegations like “In a place like Turkey where the call to speak is an
invitation to prosecution, to harassment, in a place where historical
truths do not exist, where contemporary human rights are trampled,
minority rights are unfathomable, and women’s rights unimaginable,”
it is hard to forget what the very same newspaper wrote during the
years of Armenian terrorism:
“Out of the East came a foe unequalled in his barbarity–the slit-eyed,
bow-legged Turkic nomads. […] The Seljuks and Ottomans with their
ferocious customs were determined to annihilate the whole Armenian
race.”(The Armenian Weekly, June 1st, 1983, p. 42).
This tone is still common among the readers’ comments on the Web site
of The Armenian Weekly and its counterpart of California Asbarez. In
the newspapers, the same racist ideas continue, this time using the
screen of “human rights” even more than before. In such a context,
the silence of Hrant Dink’s “heirs” is an act of complicity. The title
of an article from 2010, “Commonalty in Struggle” makes special sense
considering the kind of “struggle” which The Armenian Weekly advocated
for years–and continues to justify, not to say glorify, today.
Similarly, Peter Balakian, considered “the number 1 enemy of the
Turks” in the U.S. delivered a speech during a panel discussion on
the legacy of Hrant Dink on February 1, 2009. The text of the speech
was published–not surprisingly–in The Armenian Weekly.[7]
Ara Sarafian pointed out in The Armenian Reporter of December 18, 2008:
“Our understanding of the Armenian Genocide has been influenced
by partisan scholarship because a number of academic institutions
and political parties in Armenian communities, such as in the United
States or Great Britain, have nurtured a prosecutorial approach to the
subject. Consequently, some important elements of the events of 1915
have been distorted. The main thrust of the prosecutorial approach
has been the assertion that the genocide of Armenians was executed
with the thoroughness of the Nazi Holocaust, and that all Turks and
Kurds were involved in the genocidal process. This approach is best
exemplified by Vahakn Dadrian’s The History of the Armenian Genocide.”
To speak even more clearly, the “prosecutorial approach” criticized
rightfully by Mr. Sarafian is a racist approach. Peter Balakian’s
bestseller, The Burning Tigris, is barely more than a degraded version
of Vahakn N. Dadrian’s publications. Most of the main arguments of
The Burning Tigris are copied without particular originality from Mr.
Dadrian’s book and articles. It can be noticed in the endnotes.
In The Burning Tigris, Mr. Balakian praises the Armenian terrorism
of the 1920s–using even the fake documents of Aram Andonian–and
attenuates the circumstances of the terrorist attacks of the 1970s and
the 1980s. Mr. Balakian largely deserved the numerous congratulations
and honors which he received from the ARF.[8] But his misuse of Hrant
Dink’s cadaver for his anti-Turkish crusade should have been denounced
by the Dink family and the Hrant Dink Foundation. It was not.
However, the manifesto of Anders Breivik demonstrated how much this
far right terrorist was obsessed by Turkey. The unsubstantiated
claims of “Armenian genocide” or “Greek genocide” and even more the
racist conceptions diffused by the most radical versions of these
allegations played a central role in Mr. Breivik’s Weltanschauung
(world view)–and eventually in his decision to commit terrorist
acts. The main reactions in the West demonstrated one more time that
in the matter of terrorism, the kind of reactions depend largely on
the religion of the perpetrator.[9]
Conclusion: practicing double standards, supporting prejudices
This active and passive cooperation with groups and individual
notorious for their praising–or, in the case of the ARF,
their practicing–of terrorism is by no means coherent with the
self-description of Hrant Dink’s “heirs” as people fighting for
justice, against hatred and restriction of freedom. Elementary logic
should lead them to stop such cooperation. Until then, the single
cohesive factor in such an attitude is a permanent defamation against
Turkey–not to say against the Turkish people themselves. In the
world as described by the Hrant Dink Foundation, the perpetrators of
crimes are ethnic Turks and the victims are ethnic Armenians–never
the reverse.
The concrete effect of the Hrant Dink Foundation was to give
respectability to anti-Turkish speech and a window on Turkey to some
of the most extremist nationalists of the Armenian Diaspora. This
is in complete contradiction to Dink’s thoughts, and even more so
to the great tradition of Turkish Armenians, illustrated by Bedros
Kapamaciyan, Berc Kerestecıyan Turker, and many others.
——————————————————————————–
[1] [2]
[3]
[4]
[5] Erman Å~^ahin, “Review Essay: A Scrutiny of Akcam’s
Version of History and the Armenian Genocide,” Journal of
Muslim Minority Affairs, XXVIII-2, Summer 2008, pp. 303-319,
id. “Armenian Question: Scholarly Ethics and Methodology,” Review
of Armenian Studies, n° 19-20, 2009, pp. 141-152;id. “Review Essay:
the Armenian Question,” Middle East Policy, XVII-1, Spring 2010, pp.
144-157, [6]
[7]
[8] For example :
[9] Suleyman Ozeren, “Terrorist or Crazy: Irresistible
Denial of Naked Truth,” The Journal of Turkish Weekly,
July 28, 2011; Lenka Kantnerova, “Reactions to Norwegian
Massacre: A Double Standard?”, id., August 17, 2011,