Agence France Presse — English
January 20, 2007 Saturday
Anger in Armenia at Turkey over journalist death
Armenians at home and abroad hammered Turkey Saturday following the
killing of prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in
Istanbul.
"Turkish authorities should have guaranteed the security of Dink. He
had received many threatening letters and had told police about
them," said the Aikakan Dzhamanak (Armenian Times) newspaper.
The Aravot (Morning) daily said: "Turkey’s ability to become a
civilised, reformed country and its readiness to integrate with
Europe are in serious doubt."
Dink, who was hated by Turkish nationalists for his views on the
massacres of Armenians under Turkish rule during World War I, was
shot dead outside his office in Istanbul on Friday.
"The murder of Dink is not only aimed at freedom of speech," said a
statement from the youth movement of the Armenian nationalist party
Dashnaktsutyun.
"It is also a sign of the renaissance of anti-Armenian hysteria in
the country (Turkey), which carried out a genocide against Armenians
at the beginning of the last century."
Some 100 of the group’s militants gathered outside the European Union
mission in Yerevan, where they lit candles and laid carnations in
front of Dink’s portrait.
The press service of the Armenian Church said a special memorial
service for Dink would be held Sunday in all Armenian churches,
including the main cathedral of Echmiadzin.
"Dink’s untimely death has shocked all of us. We condemn this murder,
which took away a talented and brave son of his people, with profound
indignation," Armenian patriarch Karekin II said in a statement.
Outside of Armenia, there are many Armenian churches spread across
Europe, the Middle East and the United States, attended by a large
diaspora of ethnic-Armenians.
In France hundreds of members of the Armenian community gathered near
the Turkish embassy in Paris, carrying flags and portraits of the
journalist, while police kept them away from the building.
"The Turkish authorities bear the primary guilt for their prosecution
of this human rights activist," the head of the council of Armenian
organisations in France, Alexis Govciyan, said.
Ara Toranian, editor of the monthly magazine Nouvelles d’Armenie,
said the Turkish state and its "obtuse leadership" were responsible,
adding that Dink was "the latest victim" of the Armenian genocide.
Hundreds more protestors rallied at the Turkish consulate in
Marseille.
Armenian analysts said the killing would have little impact on ties
between Turkey and neighbouring Armenia, which have been effectively
frozen since the fall of the Soviet Union.
"I don’t think the killing will lead to any major changes in
Turkish-Armenian relations," said Alexander Iskandarian, director of
the Caucasus Media Institute in Yerevan.
"Those who were against opening the border with Turkey will say that
a Turk is still a Turk, Turkey is still a dangerous neighbour and the
border shouldn’t be opened," Iskandarian said.
"Those in favour of opening will say that such things happen
everywhere."
The 355-kilometre (221-mile) border between the two countries was
closed in 1993 at the height of the Nagorno-Karabakh war in which
ethnic-Armenian separatists in Azerbaijan took over almost a fifth of
Azerbaijani territory.
Armenia backed the separatists, while Turkey supported Azerbaijan.
In recent months, Armenian government ministers have expressed the
hope that diplomatic relations will be restored with Turkey and the
border reopened in order to boost trade and transport potential in
the region.
Views in Turkey and Armenia over the killings of ethnic-Armenians in
the Ottoman Empire during World War I are still deeply divided.
Armenians say that up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered
between 1915 and 1918 and want the massacres to be internationally
recognized as genocide.
Turkey rejects the genocide label and argues that 300,000 Armenians
and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians took
up arms for independence.