Hrant Dink

Campaigning editor assassinated outside his Istanbul office

Jonathan Fryer
Monday January 22, 2007
_The Guardian_ ()

Hrant Dink, who was assassinated aged 52 outside the Istanbul offices
of Agos, the Turkish-Armenian weekly newspaper that he edited, was the
most prominent advocate of mutual respect between Turkey’s majority
population and its Armenian minority. There have been tensions between
the two communities since the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of
thousands of Armenians from areas of what is now Turkey during the
first world war. Revered by human rights activists for his stance
against bigotry, he was reviled by Turkish ultra-nationalists, who
considered him a traitor. He was prosecuted several times for the
crime of "insulting Turkish identity" and in 2005, was sentenced to
six months in jail. Recently, he had received numerous death threats,
and had appealed in vain to the Turkish authorities for these to be
taken seriously.

Born in Malatya, Anatolia, into an Armenian family, Hrant, whose
officially registered Turkish first name was Firat, was the son of a
tailor whose marriage broke down during the boy’s infancy. At the age
of seven, Hrant was sent to Istanbul, where he lived at the Gedikpasa
Armenian orphanage. There he met his wife, Rakel. He was expelled from
his first secondary school for "leftist" political activity, but
gained admission to Istanbul University to study zoology. He began
postgraduate work in the philosophy department, but dropped out to
become involved in youth work. Later he ran a bookshop with his wife.

In 1994, he began writing columns in the Marmara Armenian newspaper,
under the pseudonym "Chootag" (violin). But he soon realised that if
he was goingto pursue his goal of building bridges between ethnic
Turks and the Armenian minority, he needed to have a more substantial
platform. Hence the creationof the weekly Turkish-Armenian newspaper
Agos, of which he was founder and editor-in-chief.

His detractors accused him of undermining the Turkish state, but as he
protested: "I am an Armenian from Turkey, and a good Turkish
citizen. I believe in the republic, in fact I would like it to become
stronger and more democratic."

In recent years, along with dozens of other journalists, writers and
publishers, including the Nobel prize laureate Orhan Pamuk, Dink was
systematically harassed, being subjected to a series of prosecutions
often initiated by the extremist self-styled Union of Lawyers. He and
other defendants were victims of verbal and physical intimidation,
even in court. He found this part icularly stressful.

A warm, sensitive man, who would greet an old friend with a bear hug,
Dink experienced what he described as "psychological torture" as he
tried to deal with the hatred targeted at him. "My computer’s memory
is loaded with sentences full of anger and threats," he wrote in his
last column in Agos, published on January 10. "I am just like a
pigeon, obsessively looking to my left and to my right, in front of me
and behind me."

The strain led to his crying during one television interview. But as
he declared: "I will not be silent. As long as I live here I will go
on telling the truth."

Dink had critics even among the Armenian diaspora in Europe and north
America as he failed to endorse their condemnation of Turkey’s refusal
to acknowledge that the massacres of Armenians in the closing years of
the Ottoman Empire amounted to genocide. Though he did not
underestimate the gravity of these events, he was appalled by the
successful campaign by French-Armenians to get a law passed last year
making it a crime in France to deny the Armenian genocide. He
believed that this was contrary to freedom of expression.

Dink’s humane and liberal political stance won admirers among the more
progressive elements in Turkish society, not least young people. He
also became a focus for groups inside Turkey and abroad campaigning
for freedom of expression. His case was raised by the European
commission in the context of Turkey’s aspiration to join the European
Union and he recently encouraged the European court of human rights to
intervene on his behalf. This further enraged the ultra-nationalists,
who reject any external interference in Turkey’s affairs and who
oppose EU membership.

Dink’s murder provoked an angry statement from the Federation of
French-Armenians, that "Turkey has killed Hrant Dink". But Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan also expressed official revulsion at the
killing.

He is survived by Rakel and their two children, a daughter, Sera, and
a son, Arat, who is also a journalist.

· Hrant (Firat) Dink, editor and journalist, born September 15 1954;
died January 19 2007