Agence France Presse — English
January 20, 2007 Saturday

Hrant Dink, an Armenian who loved Turkey and the truth

by: Nicolas Cheviron

Hated by Turkish nationalists, at times misunderstood by his kinsmen,
Hrant Dink, the Turkish journalist of Armenian origin who was
murdered on Friday was also admired by many for his commitment to
dialogue between the two communities.

"Because he sought reconciliation through truth, he was hated by
hardliners on both sides. He was a target," said an editorial in
Saturday’s edition of the English-language daily Today’s Zaman.

Dink, the53-year-old editor of bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly
Agos, which he founded 10 years ago, was shot three times in the head
and neck outside the newspaper’s office in central Istanbul.

He had drawn the ire of the extreme-right in Turkey for his position
on the World War I killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire,
which preceded the Turkish republic.

In his public speeches, which were often intensely emotional, he
never refrained from using the word "genocide", a term fiercely
rejected by Turkey, to describe the 1915-1917 massacres.

Such statements led to several legal cases being brought against Dink
and a six-month suspended jail term for insulting Turkishness.
Hearings sometimes became a free-for-all during which nationalist
lawyers threw insults at him.

The journalist, who was shy in private, also disappointed the
Armenian diaspora by criticising a Frecnh parliamentary bill that
makes it a jailable offence to deny that Armenians were the victims
of a genocide.

"This is idiocy," he said in remarks to the liberal daily Radikal in
October 2006. "It only shows that those who restrict freedom of
expression in Turkey and those who try to restrict it in France are
of the same mentality."

Dink risked further attacks by defending in court other people who
faced prosecution for expressing their opinions, notably Nobel
Literature Prize laureate Orhan Pamuk and novelist Perihan Magden.

"You came to my trial," Magden wrote in Saturday’s Radikal. "When you
saw the lynch mob at the entrance you did not go in, so as not to
give the opportunity for provocation … and you apologised
afterwards for not being at my side."

Magden hailed Dink as "a true patriot" and "a man with a big heart".

Born into a modest family in Malatya, eastern Turkey, Dink moved with
his parents to Istanbul at the age of seven. When they split up, he
entered an Armenian orphanage with his two brothers.

He studied philosophy and zoology and took various jobs, including
with the Armenian Church, running a children’s holiday camp and a
bookshop, before founding Agos in 1996.

Dink was married and had three children.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress