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Jan 21 2007
Teen ‘shot editor for insulting Turks’
>From correspondents in Istanbul
January 22, 2007 03:00am
AN unemployed teenager has told investigators he shot dead editor
Hrant Dink because he had insulted Turks, it was reported today.
Police caught Ogun Samast, 17, carrying a gun at a bus station in the
Black Sea coastal town of Samsun overnight, a day after the
Turkish-Armenian Dink was shot in broad daylight outside his
newspaper office in Istanbul.
"I read on the Internet that he (Dink) said ‘I am from Turkey but
Turkish blood is dirty’ and I decided to kill him … I do not regret
this," CNN Turk quoted Samast as saying.
Dink was a respected but controversial figure who promoted
reconciliation between Turks and Armenians but also called on Turkey
to recognise its role in massacres of Armenians during World War One.
Turkish nationalists saw such comments as an insult to national
honour.
Samsun’s chief prosecutor Ahmet Gokcinar confirmed to state-run
Anatolian news agency that Samast had confessed.
Samast and six other suspects are being questioned in Istanbul,
police said. One suspect, Yasin Hayal, served 11 months in jail for
the bombing of a McDonalds restaurant in Trabzon in 2004, the Vatan
newspaper said.
"The murder was planned in Trabzon and carried out in Istanbul.
Everybody who helped with this has been identified," Trabzon governor
Huseyin Yavuzdemir said.
The affair has shocked Turkey and raised questions about the
country’s tolerance for minorities and freedom of expression as it
seeks to join the European Union. Newspapers demanded authorities
leave no stone unturned in investigating the latest in a series of
politically-motivated murders in Turkey.
Dink, 52, was a Christian of Armenian descent and editor-in-chief of
the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos.
He was frequently criticised by right-wing Turks, including
politicians and prosecutors, for describing the mass killing of
Armenians by Ottoman Turks as a genocide.
The once-influential Armenian community in Turkey has dwindled to
some 60,000 people.
Last year, Turkey upheld a six-month suspended jail sentence against
Dink for "insulting Turkey’s identity" in his writings on Armenians
and Turks. Several other cases related to comments on the massacres
of Armenians were pending against him.
Dozens of intellectuals have been charged with insulting Turkish
identity under article 301 of the revised penal code – passed by the
current AK Party government.
Most, including Nobel Literature Prize winner Orhan Pamuk, were taken
to court by nationalist-minded prosecutors for comments related to
the alleged genocide of Armenians.
Turkey denies 1.5 million Armenians died in a systematic genocide. It
says both Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks died in a conflict on
Ottoman territory during World War One.
France has made it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide and the US
Congress is to debate a similar bill.
The ruling AK Party, which has roots in political Islam, has
repeatedly promised to revise the much criticised penal code article.
The European Union wants Ankara to change the law.
The government is likely to face pressure to address freedom of
expression and also the country’s dark past as presidential and
parliamentary elections approach.
"Just wait and see how this will resonate outside," wrote leading
columnist Mehmet Ali Birand. "Turkey will be blamed for everything.
Newspapers will write about how Turkish people could not tolerate a
liberal journalist of Armenian origin. Can there be any greater harm
to our country?"
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress