Global Voices has another roundup of posts from the Armenian and Turkish blogosphere detailing discussion in the aftermath of Hrant Dink’s murder, and the massive funeral that took place in Istanbul attended by 100,000 people. In contrast, a memorial for Dink held in Yerevan on the same day was attended by only 5,000.

Many questions were raised: is this the continuation of Turkish and Armenian animosity? Is Article 301 of the Turkish penal code to blame? Is it Turkish nationalism, ultra-nationalism? Or is it Muslim extremism? I personally doubt that an answer will ever be found, but I stand in awe of the healthy dialogue that this tragic event has given birth too.

Prior to his death, no one in the blogosphere was taking about Mr Dink. Now Technorati rates hundreds of blog posts devoted to this man.

Well, that’s not strictly true. I blogged about Hrant Dink on a few occasions in August and September 2005 here, here, and here, as well as most recently before his death in October 2006 here. Sassna Dzer also posted about Dink months before his murder here.

While in Yerevan for the 3rd Armenia-Diaspora Conference, Hrant Dink, editor of the Istanbul-based Agos weekly, said that there are visible changes in the way Turkish society is addressing the “taboo issue” of the 1915 Armenian Genocide. He noted that despite the continuing persecution of those who publicly raise the issue, “many Turks are now talking about the Armenian Genocide, while those that do not are interested in learning more.”

[…]

He elaborated on this view by commenting that, “Armenia and its influential diaspora should educate ordinary Turks instead of seeking Western pressure on Ankara. This only gives more ammunition to Turkish nationalists.” Dink concluded by stating, ‘the best way to get Turkey to address this issue is to help it become a more democratic state’.

Anyway, something that wasn’t reported by the local media here, including RFE/RL, was that a march to Tsitsernakaberd a day after Dink’s funeral was largely manufactured by the authorities. One blogger tells me that a local government friend of his was forced to attend along with other workers, and another told me that the heads of schools in Yerevan were instructed to send their pupils.

Incidently, the blogger is sure of the first source, and I have total confidence in the reliability of information for the second. Interesting to note that neither posted information on this, however. Even so, the news reports made it appear as though those in attendance went spontaneously, but word is that it was staged more in response to mass demonstrations in Turkey.

A large crowd of mourners marched through the city center to a hilltop memorial to more than one million Armenians massacred by the Ottoman Turks from 1915-1918. Some of them carried Dink’s pictures and banners holding the Turkish authorities responsible for his shock assassination.

The choice of the final point of the demonstration, organized by the Armenian Writers’ Union and the Yerevan municipality, was meant as a tribute to Dink’s public calls for Turkish recognition of the Armenian genocide which are believed to have cost him life. “We want the world to know that the genocide is continuing,” said one woman.

[…]

The protest came one day after Dink’s high-profile funeral in Istanbul that attracted tens of thousands of Turks. Thousands of them carried placards that read, “We are all Hrant Dink!” “We are all Armenians!”

Well, that’s normal for Armenia when it comes to demonstrations, but anyway, it does at least seem that his family’s desire to see him remembered as a man of peace and reconciliation has been forgotten by both nationalists in Armenia and Diaspora. It’s ironic to think that Dink disliked both, but that now they seek to turn him into some kind of martyr, but not for peace — for nationalism.

Anyway, I hate nationalism — I despise it in any shape or form. It’s not patriotism where love of your country and your people — regardless of ethnic origin — means you’ll make sacrifices and fight for the greater good. Nationalism usually centers only on creating and attacking other countries or those of a different ethnicity within your midst.

The blind hatred espoused by an extreme form of nationalism was why Dink was killed, and it’s why countless others have died throughout history and will continue to do so.

Unfortunately, Armenian and Turkey have their fair share of nationalists, although in the case of the former, most appear to be stuck in armchairs in Glendale so are largely harmless, but fighting fire with fire isn’t really going to help anyone or anything, especially when you look at the size of Turkey. Look at the size of its population, look at the size of its army, and then understand that Armenia is insignificant and pitifully weak in comparison.

Personally, I think that Arpi Vartanian got it right when she said that Armenia’s only hope is for Turkey to reform, to meet EU standards and to allow greater democracy and respect for human rights internally. Actually, I think that this is now the only hope for both Armenia and Turkey now, and the only thing that can be built upon. It’s also what Hrant Dink believed.

Choosing any other path can only enflame nationalist sentiment among the very people you’re trying to change. For Armenia, negotiations for Turkey’s accession to the European Union might be the one real trump card it has.

In the meantime, EurasiaNet reports on the rise of ultra-nationalism in Samast’s home town, Trabzon. At the same time, and as a sign that things can change, RFE/RL reports that the Governor and Head of Police there have been dismissed because most of the ultra-nationalism in Turkey is coming from there.

The city, a nationalist stronghold, has come under the spotlight with a series of violent incidents, including the murder of an Italian Catholic priest and the near lynching of five leftist activists mistaken for Kurdish separatists last year. Critics say the Trabzon authorities failed to investigate seriously the groups of rogue youths under the sway of local nationalist and anti-Christian hardliners following the murder of Father Andrea Santoro, who was gunned down last February by a 16-year-old boy while praying in his church.

What’s interesting about this is that the ultra-nationalism of Samast and other desperate youths without much of a future is seen as something very different than the nationalism of the MHP party. Interestingly, if the EurasiaNet article is anything to go by, this in itself means that something can be done to prevent the situation from escalating, but I don’t doubt that it will be an uphill struggle.

Turkey was a nationalist country long before groups opposed to its European Union accession process began pumping up xenophobia. Radical nationalism of the sort that appears to have influenced Dink’s murderers has traditionally been strongest in the towns south of the 3,500-meter peaks dividing Trabzon from the bleak Anatolian interior. But it’s only recently that Trabzon has become a center for such thinking, and locals say the phenomenon is spiraling out of control.

“What you have here is a headless monster, a nursery for potential assassins,” said Omer Faruk Altuntas, a lawyer and the local head of the small, left-leaning Freedom and Democracy Party.

“You may not like its policies, but at least the MHP [Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi – Nationalist Movement Party] controls its followers,” agreed town councilor Mehmet Akcelep, referring to Turkey’s biggest extremist nationalist party. “But Samast and hundreds of others like him aren’t party people. They’re free operators. In part, Trabzon’s problems are Turkey’s problems. In the space of little more than a decade, the port city’s population has swollen from 150,000 to around 400,000 as farmers flee the economic deprivation of the countryside. In Pelitli, the Trabzon suburb which was home to Ogun Samast, youth unemployment is high, with only two Internet cafes in which idle youngsters can wile the time away.”

In her January 26 column, Ece Temelkuran, a liberal columnist who writes for the national daily Milliyet, was pessimistic about Turkey’s future. Readers were evenly divided in their reactions to her earlier comments on Hrant Dink’s death, she wrote, with 50 percent supportive, 50 percent warning her to watch what she said.

But people who want to see a more open, more democratic Turkey “are not 50 percent of this country,” Temelkuran wrote. “We are in a tiny minority. . . More than 200,000 people marched for Hrant Dink’s funeral. That’s good. But don’t forget that number is barely 1 percent of Istanbul’s population.”

Anyway, more views and opinions are now available at Global Voices. As Deborah Ann Dilley says there, one thing’s for sure. Hrant Dink and the Armenian Question in Turkey defined the global blogosphere last week for the first time ever.