Christian Science Monitor, MA
Jan 21 2007

Murder of outspoken journalist tests Turkey’s democratic gains

The fatal shooting of Hrant Dink Friday may signal a violent turn for
resurgent Turkish nationalism.

By Yigal Schleifer | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
ISTANBUL, TURKEY – The murder Friday of a prominent and outspoken
Armenian journalist has sent shock waves throughout Turkey and raised
questions about whether a recent nationalist upsurge in the country
has taken a violent turn. It also presents the government with what
many say is a serious challenge to its already embattled
democratization and reform efforts.

The journalist, Hrant Dink, was a vocal critic of Turkey’s treatment
of its religious minorities and had been particularly outspoken
against the government’s policy of rejecting claims that the mass
killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in 1915 was genocide. He
was shot in broad daylight just outside the offices of the bilingual
Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, where he served as editor.

HRANT DINK: The Turkish-Armenian journalist in the archive room of
Agos, the newspaper he edited, shown here in a photo from February of
2005..

YIGAL SCHLEIFER

"A bullet has been fired at democracy and freedom of expression. I
condemn the traitorous hands behind this disgraceful murder," Prime
Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on television soon after Mr. Dink was
murdered. "This was an attack on our peace and stability."

The past few years have seen Turkey engaged in a deep internal
struggle. On the one hand, the country’s drive toward European Union
(EU) membership has resulted in significant political reforms,
particularly regarding democratization and human rights, and the
freeing up of the debate on what had previously been taboo subjects,
such as the Armenian question.

On the other hand, the EU-related reforms have been met with a strong
nationalist backlash.

Nationalist lawyers and prosecutors, for example, have been able to
use a law, known as Article 301, to charge writers and journalists
like Dink and Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk with the crime of insulting
Turkish identity as a way of stifling the emerging debates and
putting the brakes on Turkey’s EU bid.

Dink was tried under this article, and in 2005 was convicted and
handed a suspended six-month prison sentence.

"In a sense, both sides have been sharpening their axes, thinking
that the EU question is the final intellectual battle in Turkey,"
says Ali Carkoglu, a professor of political science at Istanbul’s
Sabanci University. "It touches on everything that is salient in
Turkish politics: the Islam versus secularism debate,
democratization, and the extent to which individual human rights are
to be protected."

For many Turks, the killing of Dink harks back to the turbulent ’70s
and ’80s, when journalists and intellectuals were frequently the
victims of ideologically inspired violence. Although Turkey has moved
forward, some wonder whether Dink’s murder is an indication that the
political gains made over the past few years have yet to be
consolidated.

"In a way, he took too many risks, he underestimated his opponents,"
says Rifat Bali, an Istanbul-based researcher who studies Turkey’s
minority communities. "Some of the ultranationalist core of Turkey
has not changed. It is a militant core that is ready, if necessary,
to murder its ideological opponents," he says.

Unlike in the past, however, Turkey’s government was quick to respond
to the murder, sending top officials to oversee the investigation.
The quick arrest of the suspect – teenager Ogun Samast – is also seen
as a positive sign, since in the past perpetrators of such crimes
were rarely caught.

"Those who created nationalist sentiment in Turkey have fed such a
monster that there are many youngsters on the streets who do not find
the … state nationalist enough and are ready to take the law into
their own hands," wrote Ismet Berkan in his daily column in Radikal,
one of Turkey’s main dailies. Extreme nationalism in Turkey is
divided into secular and religious camps, although what unites both
is non-Muslim minorities.

Experts here say the murder poses a major challenge for the Turkish
government, led by the moderately Islamic Justice and Development
Party (AKP).

With its EU bid already suffering – negotiations with Brussels have
been partially suspended since December – the killing of a journalist
who had already been the target of legal proceedings strongly
condemned by the EU will only increase the pressure on Ankara and
further tarnish its image in Europe.

"The image problem was already bad and this can only make it worse.
Turkey will be seen as a country not only curtailing freedom of
expression but the country that can also produce people who will
assassinate writers and thinkers," says Suat Kiniklioglu, director of
the German Marshall Fund’s office in Turkey.

"The atmosphere that created this person to go after Hrant Dink with
a gun was really the result of the atmosphere created by the trials
brought on by Article 301," he says. "In that respect, the government
will need now to really take article 301 seriously."

Outside the offices of Agos, an Armenian word that refers to a place
where a seed is growing, a makeshift memorial has been created near
the spot where Dink was gunned down, with crowds gathering to light
candles and lay down flowers.

Dink, who founded the paper in 1996, used his last few columns to
write about his legal woes.

"For me, 2007 is likely to be a hard year," he wrote in one column.
"The trials will continue, new ones will be started. Who knows what
other injustices I will be up against."

In his final column, Dink wrote about the increasing amount of hate
mail he was getting, including one letter that scared him enough that
he went to the local prosecutor to ask for protection, although
without any luck.

"I don’t know anyone else like him who raised his voice for
minorities and democracy in Turkey," says Murat Celikkan, a veteran
Turkish journalist and human rights activist.

"Intellectually he was a very important figure for Turkey. We don’t
have anyone else like him."