Editor & Publisher
Jan 20 2007

Turkey Still in Shock After Assassination of Journalist

Published: January 20, 2007 10:20 AM ET

ISTANBUL Turkey’s press conveyed the nation’s sense of shock, shame
and self-reflection on Saturday, a day after a journalist and
Armenian community leader was assassinated at the entrance to his
bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper.

The killer and motives for the murder of Hrant Dink were unknown
early Saturday, and Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu said no
suspects were in custody. Istanbul’s governor, however, said
authorities had evidence that would allow them to solve the case.

Dink, who gained notoriety after he was put on trial for saying that
the mass killing of Armenians at the beginning of the 20th century
was genocide, was shot and killed Friday in broad daylight. He had
received numerous threats before his murder, and wrote in his last
newspaper column that he was so worried about attacks that his head
swiveled like a pigeon’s as he moved around Istanbul.

Many Turkish newspapers ran a photograph of what was said to be the
killer, a photo captured on a security camera from behind. The image
revealed few details about the man’s appearance.

Turkey’s press was unanimous Saturday morning in claiming as their
own a man whose life in Turkey was largely defined by his being
labeled a traitor and an enemy to his country.

Turkish officials promised to release details of the killing, and
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan went on national television at
least three times to speak about the murder.

"The bullets aimed at Hrant Dink were shot into all of us," he said
Saturday. Within hours of Dink’s murder, the prime minister had sent
his interior minister and justice minister to Istanbul to lead the
investigation.

The state-owned Anatolia news agency reported that Istanbul’s chief
of police and other unit chiefs spent the night at police
headquarters.

Most Turks assumed the shooting was a reaction to Dink’s public
statements that the mass killings of Armenians around the time of
World War I constituted genocide. Nationalists see such statements as
insults to the honor of Turks and as threats to national unity.

Whatever the motivation, the killing made it clear that Turkey
remains a place where people speak freely at their own peril, despite
generations of Western-looking liberal reforms and the nation’s
commitment to joining the European Union.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said Turkey was
the eighth deadliest country in the world for journalist, with 18
killed in the past 15 years for their work. Turkey’s Zaman newspaper
said 62 journalists have been assassinated in the nation’s 84-year
history.

Dink, 52, was often subjected to more subtle attempts to silence him.
He was one of dozens of journalists, writers and academics who have
gone on trial for expressing their opinions here, most under the
infamous article 301 of the penal code, which makes it a crime to
insult Turkey, its government or the national character.

In the most famous case, Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk
faced jail time last year for insulting Turkey by saying Turks had
killed a million Armenians. His case was dropped on a technicality.

Dink clearly sensed his life was in danger.

"My computer’s memory is loaded with sentences full of anger and
threats," he wrote on Jan. 10 in his last newspaper column. "I am
just like a pigeon. … I look around to my left and right, in front
and behind me as much as it does. My head is just as active."

In the past few years, Turks had come to know Dink well, mostly
because of the high-profile cases opened against him. In late 2005,
Turks saw him lose his composure, crying on television as he
discussed his latest court case and what it was like to live amid
people who hated him.

A Turkish citizen, Dink said he would stay here, however, in the
hopes that cases he opened at the European Court of Human Rights
would be resolved in his favor, and do something to improve his
country.

Turkey’s relationship with its Armenian community has long been
fraught with tension, controversy and painful memories of a brutal
past.

Much of Turkey’s once-sizeable Armenian population was killed or
driven out beginning around 1915 in what an increasing number of
countries are recognizing as the first genocide of the 20th century.

Turks vehemently deny that their ancestors committed genocide,
however, and saying so is tantamount to treason. In the 1970s and
1980s, tensions were further inflamed as dozens of Turkish diplomats
were killed by Armenian assassins seeking revenge.

Turkey, which is 99 percent Muslim, and Armenia, which claims to be
the first country to officially adopt Christianity, share a border.
But the border is closed, and the two countries have no formal
diplomatic relations.

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