Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia
Sunday Times.au, Australia
The Australian, Australia
Jan 20 2007
Editor shot dead in Istanbul
>From correspondents in Istanbul
January 20, 2007 02:56am
A HIGH-profile Turkish-Armenian editor, convicted of insulting
Turkey’s identity, was shot dead outside his newspaper office in
Istanbul today.
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 Agos in central Istanbul.
`A bullet has been fired at democracy and freedom of expression. I
condemn the traitorous hands behind this disgraceful murder,’ Prime
Minister Tayyip Erdogan said.
`This was an attack on our peace and stability.’
Mr Erdogan told a hastily called news conference in Ankara that two
people had been detained in connection with the murder.
The attack is bound to raise political tensions in would-be EU member
Turkey, where politicians of all parties have been courting the
nationalist vote ahead of presidential elections in May and
parliamentary polls due by November.
Turkey’s main stock market index fell sharply on the news.
NTV television said Dink had been shot three times in the head and
neck.
Muharrem Gozutok, a restaurant owner near the newspaper, said the
assailant looked about 20, wore jeans and a cap and shouted `I shot
the non-Muslim’ as he left the scene.
Protesters outside the Agos office on one of Istanbul’s busiest
streets chanted `the murderer government will pay’ and
`shoulder-to-shoulder against fascism’.
Television footage showed Dink’s body lying in the street covered by
a white sheet, with hundreds of bystanders gathering behind a police
cordon.
`This bullet was fired against Turkey … an image has been created
about Turkey that its Armenian citizens have no safety,’ said CNN
Turk editor Taha Akyol.
Last year Turkey’s appeals court upheld a six-month suspended jail
sentence against Dink for referring in an article to an Armenian
nationalist idea of ethnic purity without Turkish blood.
The court said the comments went against article 301 of Turkey’s
revised penal code, which lets prosecutors pursue cases against
writers and scholars for `insulting Turkish identity’.
The ruling was sharply criticised by the EU.
Dink was one of dozens of writers who have been charged for insulting
Turkishness, particularly over the alleged genocide of Armenians by
Turks during World War I.
Turkey denies allegations that 1.5 million Armenians were killed in a
systematic genocide. It says both Christian Armenians and Muslim
Turks were killed in a partisan conflict that raged on Ottoman
territory.
But the government has repeatedly promised to revise the much
criticised article of the penal code amid EU pressure. Improving
freedom of speech in Turkey is a priority in Ankara’s efforts to join
the 27-member bloc.
`Hrant was a perfect target for those who want to obstruct Turkey’s
democratisation and its path towards the European Union,’ Agos writer
Aydin Engin said.
Dink was editor-in-chief of the bilingual Turkish and Armenian weekly
and one of the most prominent Armenian voices in Turkey.
`I will not leave this country. If I go I would feel I was leaving
alone the people struggling for democracy in this country. It would
be a betrayal of them. I could never do this,’ Dink said in an
interview last July.
Tensions have been growing ahead of presidential elections amid a
rise in nationalism.
Turkey’s powerful secularist establishment fears the ruling AK Party,
which controls parliament and has roots in political Islam, will
elect Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan as president.
Secularists, including powerful army generals and judges, fear Mr
Erdogan – a former Islamist – would try to erode Turkey’s strict
division between state and religion if elected president.
Mr Erdogan denies he or his party have an Islamist agenda.