Reporters without borders (press release), France
Jan 19 2007

Deep shock over Turkish-Armenian editor’s murder today in Istanbul

Reporters Without Borders said it was deeply shocked by the murder of
Hrant Dink, editor and columnist of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian
weekly Agos, who was gunned down by an unidentified man today outside
his newspaper in Istanbul.

`This murder will distress and disturb all those who defend the
freedom of thought and expression in Turkey and elsewhere,’ the press
freedom organisation said. `The Turkish government must weigh the
extreme gravity of this crime and ensure that a thorough
investigation identifies those responsible as quickly as possible.’

Reporters Without Borders added: `This will be a key test for a
country that hopes to join the European Union. No one would
understand if Turkey failed to do everything possible to shed light
on this tragedy.’

Aged 53, Dink was killed by several shots fired at him shortly after
midday as he was outside the premises of his privately-owned
newspaper in Sisli, a district on the European side of Istanbul. The
police said they were looking for a youth aged about 18 or 19 wearing
a jean-jacket and a white beret.

A well-known journalist and one who was respected by his colleagues,
Dink was the target of several prosecutions over his views on the
massacre of Armenians under the Ottoman empire. In 2005, he received
six-month suspended sentence for `humiliating Turkish identity.’ He
was prosecuted against in September 2006 over an interview he gave to
Reuters in which he referred to the massacres in Anatolia during the
First World War as `genocide.’ He had been facing a possible
three-year prison sentence.

Reporters Without Borders is supporting the call issued by the
Coordinating Council of Armenian Organisations in France (CCAF) for a
demonstration at noon tomorrow outside the Turkish embassy on Rue
Ankara in Paris’ 16th district.