Agence France Presse — English
January 20, 2007 Saturday

Huge outcry in Turkish press after slaying of journalist

Turkish newspapers condemned Saturday the murder of prominent
Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink as "a national shame," calling
for his funeral to become a mass event in the name of democracy and
peace in the country.

"The murderer is a traitor," declared the mass-circulation Hurriyet
on its front page, next to a huge portrait of Dink on a black
background, while the popular Sabah headlined: "The greatest
treason."

Both dailies were using the epithet that nationalists have used to
brand Dink and other intellectuals contesting the official line on
the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, which much
to Ankara’s ire, many countries have recognized as genocide.

"Bullets fired on democracy, fraternity and peace," the Milliyet
newspaper trumpeted, while Radikal wrote "We are all Armenians, we
are all Hrants," using one of the chants that thousands shouted
during a protest march in Istanbul late Friday after an indentified
assailant gunned down Dink outside the office of his Turkish-Armenian
newspaper Agos.

"Our Hrant is murdered," the Islamist Yeni Safak headlined,
describing Dink as "an Armenian son of Turkey, a journalist devoted
to democracy and free thought and a brave man."

"Hrant’s murder is our national shame," Milliyet columnist Semih Idiz
wrote.

"The only way to obliterate at least part of it is to bid him
farewell as a nation — from the president to the prime minister,
from the main opposition leader to the army chief," he added.

Many editorialists let their emotions flow at the loss of a
colleague, who was last year given a suspended six-month sentence for
insulting "Turkishness" in an article about the Armenian massacres
and was frequently threatened by nationalists.

"When I heard of Hrant’s murder, I cried and cried — for him or for
my country, I do not know. What I know is that this shame will haunt
us for many years to come," Sabah’s Fatih Altayli said.

Some commentators saw serious implications for Turkish foreign
policy, with the popular Vatan stressing that Armenian campaigns for
an international recognition of the 1915-17 massacres as genocide
would gain strength.

"This incident also plays in the hands of those who want to cut
Turkey’s ties with the West and block its accession to the European
Union," Vatan columnist Okay Gonensin wrote.

Politicians also came under fire for failing to quell what many see
here as rising nationalism among Turks.

"The politicians and the state establishment should see this
assassination, committed in a time of rising fanaticism in Turkey, as
an alarm bell. The target was not only Hrant Dink, but Turkey’s
stability," Mehmet Barlas wrote in Sabah.