MURDER OF HRANT DINK TO INCANDESCE DOMESTIC POLITICAL SITUATION IN TURKEY:
HEAD OF TURKISH DEPARTMENT OF ARMENIAN NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
Yerevan, January 20. ArmInfo. The Jan 19 murder of Armenian journalist
Hrant Dink in Istanbul will incandesce the domestic political
situation in Turkey, Candidate of History Rouben Safrastyan, the head
of the Turkish Department of the Oriental Studies Institute of the
Armenian National Academy of Sciences, said at the Yerevan,
According to him, elections will be held in Turkey in May 2007, and at
the moment, contending for the presidential post are present Turkish
president Ahmed Cezer, a representative of the so-called Kemalist or
pro-European direction, on the one hand, and advocates of the
pro-Islamic direction of the country led by Prime Minister Recep
Erdogan, on the other hand. However, one shouldn’t forget that at the
same time, there is also a group of high ranking officials who prefer
to remain in the shadow and solve important state problems by means of
extremist groupings like the terrorist organization. Probably, these
people ordered and performed the murder of Hrant Dink to show that the
true Turkey is not the central blocks of houses in Istanbul but the
rest of Turkey’s territory with the pro-Islamic population,
R.Safrastyan considers. He also noted that this crime will put off the
illusive prospect of unblocking the Armenian-Turkish border. Hrant
Dink really believed that one could change Turkey from within, but his
death showed once again how far Turkey is from democracy and freedom
of speech, the expert noted.
Political Scientist Alexander Iskandaryan, the director of the
Institute of the Caucasian Mass Media, also said that one should
distinguish Istanbul from the rest of Turkey. The population of the
central blocks of Istanbul striving for Europe organized a protest
rally in connection with the murder of Hrant Dink, but 20 km far from
Istanbul you find yourself in a quite different Turkey, whose
population really doesn’t understand the reason of the protest rally
on some Armenian’s death, A.Iskandaryan noted. As regards the
Armenian-Turkish relations after the Jan 19 murder, nothing special
will happen.
A.Iskandaryan considers that those who were against improving
Armenian-Turkish relations will not take a different view, and those
who came out for normalizing the relations, will consider that nothing
special has happened as murders are committed in many countries of the
world.
At the same time, both participants of the press-conference agreed
that one needn’t look for some third countries behind the murder of
Hrant Dink, as it is the consequence of the present domestic political
situation in Turkey.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress