Globe and Mail, Canada
Jan 20 2007
Bullet ‘fired at freedom of thought’
ESTANISLAO OZIEWIC and NICHOLAS BIRCH
Globe and Mail Update
TORONTO and ISTANBUL – One of the most prominent members of Turkey’s
dwindling Armenian community was shot dead outside his newspaper
office in central Istanbul yesterday in an attack the Turkish Prime
Minister said was aimed at destabilizing the country.
"A bullet was fired at freedom of thought and democratic life," Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, shortly after Hrant Dink was shot
several times from behind outside Agos, the bilingual
Armenian-Turkish newspaper he edited.
The slaying brought into brutal relief Turkey’s roiling relationship
with its ethnic Armenian citizens over painful and wildly divergent
memories of a brutal past.
The controversy over whether mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman
Turks in 1915 constituted genocide has spilled far beyond Turkey and
Europe, which is considering Turkey’s entry into its union.
In Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government has both
formally recognized that a genocide occurred and, in a seeming
contradiction, supported Istanbul’s proposal for a fresh study of
those events.
Taro Alepian, chairman of the Congress of Canadian Armenians, said in
a statement that Mr. Dink’s assassination "should now be transformed
into an opportunity for reconciliation between the people of Turkey
and Armenians around the world."
Mr. Alepian said extremists who killed Mr. Dink should not be allowed
to have the final word.
"This was an organized attempt by those who want to destroy Turkey’s
European Union aspirations and cast Turkey into darkness," said Akin
Birdal, former head of Turkey’s Human Rights Association, himself
shot and severely wounded in 1998 by suspected nationalists.
Turkey has long maintained that the deaths nearly a century ago were
caused by civil strife, diseases and famine during the collapse of
the Ottoman Empire. And it has prosecuted Mr. Dink and others for
daring to question the official state denial that the genocide
occurred.
In October, 2005, Mr. Dink was convicted of trying to influence the
judiciary after Agos ran stories criticizing a law making it a crime
to denigrate Turkey, the Turkish government or the Turkish national
character. He was given a six-month suspended sentence.
They were the same charges that had been levelled at Nobel
prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk.
Amnesty International said yesterday that official attitudes in
Turkey and laws suppressing freedom of speech give rise to violence.
"These laws, coupled with the persisting official statements by
senior government, state and military officials condemning critical
debate and dissenting opinion, create an atmosphere in which violent
attacks can take place," said Amnesty’s Nicola Duckworth.
Mr. Dink, a frequent target of Turkish nationalist anger over his
defence of freedom of speech, had been complaining of death threats
for weeks. "My computer’s memory is loaded with sentences full of
hatred and threats," he wrote in his Agos column on Jan. 10.
One e-mail threatening his children worried him particularly, he
wrote, adding that police had taken no action after he complained.
Set up in 1996, the weekly Agos was the fruit of his belief that only
dialogue could resolve the bitter memories of the 1915 events.
In fact, Mr. Dink was vehemently opposed to a proposed French law
that would imprison anyone who publicly denies that the massacre of
Armenians was a genocide.
"I have been tried in Turkey for saying the Armenian genocide exists,
and I have talked about how wrong this is," Mr. Dink said in an
interview with CNN-Turk last year. "But if this bill becomes law, I
will be one of the first to head to France and break the law. Then we
can watch Turkey and the French government race to see which will
throw me in jail first."
His slaying comes at a crucial time for Turkey, which is preparing
itself for presidential and parliamentary elections later this year.
It also coincides with growing EU pressure on Turkey to resolve
continuing problems with its minorities. Last week, the European
Court of Human Rights ordered Turkey to pay 900,000 in damages to a
Turkish Greek religious foundation whose Istanbul property had been
confiscated by the state.
A law that would have helped Greek, Armenian and Jewish minorities
win back confiscated properties was vetoed last year by Turkish
President Ahmet Necdet Sezer.
Over the past week, Turkish newspapers have been full of reports that
the new Democrat-weighted U.S. Congress may recognize the Armenian
genocide.
Murat Celikkan, a friend of Mr. Dink’s, said he was one of the few
who dared speak out.
"The fact that he spoke for peace and brotherhood makes no difference
to the people who did this. Because this is a country where hate
speech is not stamped out, but promoted."
A crowd gather in front of Mr. Dink’s office and chanted, "Shoulder
to shoulder against fascism," and "We are all Hrant, we are all
Armenians."
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
