January 20, 2007


Turkish Columnists on Hrant Dink’s Murder

After looking at what some Turkish bloggers are saying about Hrant Dink’s murder on their sites, it’s interesting to read what Turkish columnists are writing in their papers. Turkish Torque has compiled a digest.

“I have never called anyone a “traitor” in my whole life. I have not even called Ali Kemal a “traitor.” I am using this word for the first time for [Dink’s] murderer. Yes, who ever did this, is a true traitor [to Turkey]. He is an enemy of Turkey, the Turkish Republic and all her citizens… Trust me, this murder will make two groups of people very happy – the racist Turks and the racist Armenians. All others should go into a deep mourning starting today.”

— Ertugrul Ozkok, Hurriyet

[…]

“Hrant Dink from the very beginning waged a struggle to bring the Turkish and Armenian communities together. He was as Turkish as he was an Armenian, and an Armenian as much as he was a Turk. He loved both his country and his [ethnic] roots. He never went to the extremes and always looked for compromises. To kill Hrant Dink means to be Turkey’s enemy… The hands that hit him have no idea that they have actually hit Turkey.”

— Mehmet Ali Birand, Posta

[…]

“Hrant Dink was a journalist who defended his views with courage. Sometimes some of his words came across as being too pointed. And some of his other words were unfortunately exploited for different purposes. However, the fact remains that he always sought out peace. He was a democrat who believed in the magic of discussing things. In his person, peace in Turkey is shot. Actually, whole Turkey took a bullet.”

— Melih Asik, Milliyet

[…]

“I am struck in the heart of my hearts. I have lost a friend of mine, Hrant Dink. They murdered him. I feel so weak I can’t even write anything. I am stuck in between my grief and anger. Damn be those who killed him and those who rejoice his murder!”

— Ali Bayramoglu, Yeni Safak

The full compilation of quotes from the Turkish press is here. Turkish Torque also has more on the protest in Istanbul here.

Posted by Onnik @ 12:56 pm. Filed under: Armenia, Armenian Diaspora, Media, Human Rights, Freedom of Speech, Turkey, Armenian Genocide, Caucasus, Europe, History, Crime, Censorship, Hrant Dink




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  1. It’s probably also worth pointing out that Hrant Dink’s colleagues at the AGOS newspaper in Istanbul have also issued a statement on the front page of their web site.

    Our dearest friend , our brother , the editor in chief of AGOS newspaper Hrant Dink has been assasinated ruthlessly.

    There are no words to explain our pain.

    Our deepest condolences for those who can still feel themselves as human beings.

    […]

    He tries to make this newspaper a democrat and oppositional voice of Turkey and also to share the injustices done to Armenian community with public opinion.

    One of the major aims of the newspaper is to contribute to dialogue between Turkish and Armenian nations and also between Turkey and Armenia.

    He takes part in various democratic platforms and civil society organizations.

    There’s more in Turkish on the site.

    Meanwhile, an old friend of mine from London, the new Director of the Armenian Research Center at the University of Michigan-Dearbourne, Ara Sanjian, has sent out Robert Fisk’s commentary on Dink’s murder. I received the text from Ara a moment ago, and am including it below.

    Hrant Dink became the 1,500,001st victim of the Armenian genocide yesterday. An educated and generous journalist and academic - editor of the weekly Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos - he tried to create a dialogue between the two nations to reach a common narrative of the 20th century’s first holocaust. And he paid the price: two bullets shot into his head and two into his body by an assassin in the streets of Istanbul yesterday afternoon.

    It was not only a frightful blow to Turkey’s surviving Armenian community but a shattering reversal to Turkey’s hope of joining the European Union, a visionary proposal already endangered by the country’s broken relations with Cyprus and its refusal to acknowledge the genocide for what it was: the deliberate mass killing of an entire race of Christian people - 1,500,000 in all - by the country’s Ottoman Turkish government in 1915. Winston Churchill was among the first to call it a holocaust but to this day, the Turkish authorities deny such a definition, ignoring documents which Turkey’s own historians have unearthed to prove the government’s genocidal intent.

    The 53-year-old journalist, who had two children, was murdered at the door of his newspaper. Just over a year ago, he was convicted under Turkey’s notorious law 301 of “anti-Turkishness”, a charge he strenuously denied even after he received a six-month suspended sentence from an Istanbul court.

    The EU has demanded that Turkey repeal the law under which the country also tried to imprison Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk. At the time of his trial, Dink appeared on Turkish television in tears. “I’m living together with Turks in this country,” he said then. “And I’m in complete solidarity with them. I don’t think I could live with an identity of having insulted them in this country.”

    It is a stunning irony that Dink had accused his fellow Armenians in an article of allowing their enmity towards the Turks for the genocide to have a “poisoning effect on your blood” - and that the court took the article out of context and claimed he was referring to Turkish blood as poisonous.

    Dink told news agency reporters in 2005 that his case had arisen from a question on what he felt when, at primary school, he had to take a traditional Turkish oath: “I am a Turk, I am honest, I am hard-working.” In his defence, Dink said: “I said that I was a Turkish citizen but an Armenian and that even though I was honest and hard-working, I was not a Turk, I was an Armenian.” He did not like a line in the Turkish national anthem that refers to “my heroic race”. He did not like singing that line, he said, “because I was against using the word ‘race’, which leads to discrimination”.

    Pamuk had earlier faced a court for talking about the 1915 genocide in a Swiss magazine. Leading Turkish publishers say that there is now an incendiary atmosphere in Turkey towards all writers who want to tell the truth about the genocide, when vast areas of Turkish Armenia were dispossessed of their Christian populations. Tens of thousands of men were massacred by Turkish gendarmerie - and by Kurds - while many Armenian women and children were raped and butchered in the northern Syrian deserts. The few survivors still alive have described the burning of living Armenian children on bonfires.

    In fact, a book published in Turkey and in the United States by Turkish scholar Tamer Akcam gives documentary details of the orders passed down from the Ottoman government in what was then Constantinople for the deliberate and industrialised killing of the Armenians. Thousands were also suffocated in underground caves in what were the world’s first gas chambers. Adolf Hitler asked his generals in 1939: “Who remembers the Armenians?” And he went on to begin the Holocaust of the Jews of Poland. Whether the police discover that Dink’s murderer is a Turkish nationalist - or even, though it might seem inconceivable, an Armenian nationalist outraged by his earlier remarks - will be an important proof of the country’s willingness to confront its past.

    Comment by Onnik — January 20, 2007 @ 1:58 pm

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