The Daily Telegraph, UK
Jan 20 2007

Pro-Armenian journalist shot dead in Turkey
By Amberin Zaman in Istanbul
Last Updated: 2:08am GMT 20/01/2007

A prominent Turkish journalist who campaigned for Armenian rights was
shot outside his office in central Istanbul by suspected Turkish
nationalists today, only days after saying he had received anonymous
death threats.

Hrant Dink provoked anger in Turkey for describing the killing of
Armenians in 1915 as genocide
The murder of Hrant Dink, who was of Armenian descent, is set to deal
a further blow to Turkey’s efforts to join the EU.

Mr Dink, 53, was shot in the head and neck three times by an
unidentified gunman as he was leaving the bilingual Turkish Armenian
newspaper, Agos, that he edited at around 3pm local time.

Eyewitnesses said the assailant was a teenager wearing a white cap
and jeans. `He shouted ‘I shot the infidel’ as he ran away,’ said
Muharrem Gozutok, a restaurant owner.

Police detained two people in connection with the murder but they
were released after interrogation.

The Turkish private news channel NTV showed images of Mr Dink’s
corpse covered with a white sheet, his feet shod in brown leather
shoes sticking out at one end, his crop of unruly black hair at the
other.

Hundreds of Turkish citizens gathered outside Agos chanting `We are
all Armenians, we are all Hrant Dink.’

Mr Dink, a Turkish citizen of Armenian descent, faced a number of
court cases as well as death threats relating to his comments about
the mass slaughter of up to a million Armenians by Ottoman Turkish
forces during and after the First World War.

The 53-year old journalist provoked widespread anger in Turkey for
having characterized the killings as genocide.

Last year a Turkish court confirmed a suspended six-month jail
sentence handed down to Mr Dink for an article in which he exhorted
fellow Armenians to `purify their blood of hatred for Turks.’

The prosecution was unswayed by his argument that it was a call for
peace and ruled that it was an `insult to Turkishness’ an offense
that is punishable by a maximum three year jail sentence.

Mr Dink had been preparing to appeal his case before the European
Court of Human Rights.

The EU’s enlargement commissioner, Olli Rehn today said, `I am
shocked and saddened by this brutal act of violence. I trust that the
Turkish authorities will fully investigate this crime and will bring
the perpetrators to justice.’

Turkey’s conservative prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, pledged to
track down the killers `no matter if they are Turkish or foreign’.

`A bullet has been fired at Turkish democracy and free speech,’ he
said.

Despite Mr Erdogan’s pledge to track down the killers, scores of
Turkish writers and academics face prosecution under laws introduced
by Mr Erdogan’s government that make it an offence to insult Turkey
by making references to the massacre of Armenians during the First
World War.

They include Turkey’s best know author and first Nobel prize
laureate, Orhan Pamuk, who was prosecuted on charges of `insulting
Turkishness’ for telling a Swiss newspaper that `one million
Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in these lands but no one but
I dares talk about it.’

Mr Pamuk’s case was dropped last year on a technicality.

Turkey denies that the events of 1915 constituted genocide saying no
more than 300,000 Armenians perished at the time.

Turkey insists most of the Armenians died from hunger and disease
after they were forcibly deported from eastern Turkey for having
collaborated with invading Russian forces in the last days of the
Ottoman Empire.

Anyone who challenges this official version of history risks
prosecution in Turkey, as did Mr Dink. A fervent champion of
Turkish-Armenian dialogue, Mr Dink managed to anger his fellow
Armenians by insisting that it was time to set aside the past and
move on.