Turkish-Armenian writer shot dead

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January 19, 2007

The Turkish-Armenian writer and journalist Hrant Dink has been shot
dead, Turkish media report.

Dink, the high-profile editor of newspaper Agos, was shot three times
outside its offices in Istanbul, the paper said.

Dink was one of the writers who had been prosecuted under Turkey’s
strict laws against "insulting Turkishness".

He was given a six-month suspended sentence in October 2005 after
writing about the Armenian "genocide" of 1915.

Turkey’s NTV television said police were searching for a teenager
wearing a white hat and a denim jacket in connection with the murder.

The channel showed pictures of a white sheet covering the journalist’s
body in front of the newspaper building’s entrance.

Dink, 53, had received threats from nationalists who viewed him as a
traitor, the Associated Press news agency reported.

He was a public figure in Turkey – one of its most prominent Armenian
voices.

He once gave an interview with the Associated Press in which he cried
while describing the hatred some Turks had for him, saying he could
not stay in a country where he was unwanted.

Hundreds of thousands of Armenians died in 1915, in what many
Armenians say was a systematic massacre at the hands of the Ottoman
Turks.

Turkey denies any genocide, saying the deaths were a part of World War
I.

Turkey and neighbouring Armenia still have no official relations.