AKI, Italy
Jan 19 2007

TURKEY: UPDATE – PROMINENT TURKISH-ARMENIAN JOURNALIST SHOT DEAD

Istanbul, 19 Jan. (AKI) – Turkish police have arrested two people
linked with the fatal shooting of a prominent ethnic Armenian
journalist Hrant Dink in Istanbul on Friday, Turkish media reported.
The two men were picked up in the Istanbul city centre, the reports
said. Earlier reports cited witnesses who said that the killer was a
young man under the age of twenty who opened fire on Dink in
Istanbul’s Sisli district.

Dink, the editor-in-chief of Agos, an Istanbul-based Armenian
language newspaper was convicted last year on charges of ‘insulting
Turkishness’, after he referred to the banned topic of the genocide
of Armenians under Ottoman rule a the beginning of the 20th Century.
His sentencing in the case was postponed.

52-year-old Dink, who was shot outside an Agos’ office building, had
received several threats from Turkish ultra-nationalists.

After the shooting dozens of people – ethnic Armenians as well as
Turks – gathered to protest the killing. They chanted slogans
including: "Long live the brotherhood of people! Hand in hand against
fascism!"

Turkey’s president condemned the murders saying in a statement that
"inhumane acts would never achieve their aims."

Turkey which is bidding to join the EU has come under pressure from
the 27-nation bloc to drop from the Turkish penal code provisions
that make it a crime to challenge the official view that the Armenian
genocide never took place.

In his reponse to Friday’s shooting the leader of the
ultra-nationalist party BBP (Great Union Party) Muhsin Yazicioglu
said: "We don’t approve of murder, irrespective of someone’s
ethnicity, religious beliefs or opinions."

But Yazicioglu suggested that Dink’s murder may have been organised
by Armenians who disapproved of the journalist’s criticism of moves
"in the parliament of foreign countries" – a reference to France –
which would make it a crime to deny that the Armenian genocide took
place.

"The capture of the attacker will contribute to unveil the dark and
hidden groups operating against Turkey. I’m sorry both for the person
killed and for my country" Yazicioglu said.

A number of prominent Turkish authors including Nobel Literature
laureate Orhan Pamuk have fallen foul of the law that forbids people
to claim that the Armenian genocide took place.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress