editorsweblog.org
Jan 19 2007
Turkey: journalist of Armenian descent murdered
Hrant Dink, a Turkish journalist of Armenian origins, editor of the
weekly Agos, was shot to death today in Istanbul. He had been sued by
Turkish courts and was the target of nationalist groups.
He was shot in front of his newspaper’s office. He had been sued
several times for saying that the massive killing of Armenians during
the Ottoman Empire was a genocide.
`Of course I say it’s a genocide. Because the result makes it what it
was. You can see that a people who had lived on these grounds for
4000 years has disappeared.’
Dink had been sued under the infamous penal code on ‘insulting
Turkishness," which has been used to persecute dozens of
intellectuals and speakers, usually because of their ‘genocidal’ view
of the Armenian massacre.
Armenians claim that 1.5 million of them were slaughtered between
1915 and 1918. According to Turkey, 300,000 Armenians were killed,
and just as many Turks when Armenians sided with Russian troops in
Anatolia, revolting against the Ottoman Empire.
Source: Le Monde (link in French)