‘Editor shot for insulting Turks’

The Brunei Times, Brunei Darussalam –
Jan 22 2007

ISTANBUL

22-Jan-07

THE suspected killer of a prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist has
confessed to shooting Hrant Dink because he had insulted Turkish
people, broadcaster CNN Turk reported on yesterday.

"I read on the Internet that he said ‘I am from Turkey but Turkish
blood is dirty’ and I decided to kill him.

"I do not regret this," Ogun Samast told interrogators shortly after
he was arrested in Samsun on the Black Sea coast, CNN Turk said.

Samast, 17, was arrested on Saturday and confessed to the murder
in an initial interrogation in Samsun before he and several other
suspects were transferred to Istanbul. Police declined to comment,
but said interrogations in Istanbul were continuing.

Dink, editor of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos, was shot
dead in the street as he left his office on Friday in a killing which
has shocked Turkey.

Last year Turkey’s top court upheld a six-month suspended jail sentence
against Dink for referring in an article to an Armenian nationalist
idea of ethnic purity without Turkish blood.

Dink, 52, was a Christian of Armenian descent. He was frequently
criticised by Turkish nationalists, including top politicians and
prosecutors, for saying the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman
Turks during World War One was genocide.

Nationalists see such comments as a threat to national unity. The
government of Turkey, which is predominantly Muslim, denies genocide
and says both Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks died in large
numbers as the Ottoman Empire was breaking up.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress