Athens News Agency, Greece
Jan 20 2007

PASOK leader condemns Turkish-Armenian journalist’s murder

Main opposition Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) leader and
Socialist International (SI) President George Papandreou made a
statement on Friday condemning the assassination of Turkish-Armenian
journalist Hrant Dink in Istanbul earlier in the day.

"Hrant Dink was an intellectual journalist who worked hard with
consistency, a profound feeling of responsibility and great energy
for democratic rights and freedom of the Press in Turkey, facing
judicial prosecutions," he said.

High-profile Turkish-Armenian editor, Hrant Dink, a frequent
target of nationalist anger for his comments on the mass killings of
Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War One, was shot as he left
his weekly newspaper Agos around 1300 GMT Friday in the centre of
Istanbul.

"His assassination is an act of violence that constitutes a blow
to efforts being made to strengthen the country’s European
prospects," Papandreou added and pointed out that "Hrant Dink is the
victim of the fanaticism of those forces that are pursuing
obscurantism."

Lastly, Papandreou said that "all we democratic socialists in
Greece and all over the world condemn the hideous assassination of
Hrant Dink and express the hope that the Turkish authorities will
take every necessary action to achieve the complete solving of the
crime and the sending of the perpetrators to Justice."