Funeral of Hrant Dink, Istanbul, 23/01/07

Words: Jerome Taylor,

The Independent – United Kingdom
Published: Jan 24, 2007

The crowd

In an extraordinary outpouring of public grief and spontaneous protest
against militant Turkish nationalism, more than 100,000 mourners march
through Istanbul in a funeral procession for the slain Turkish-Armenian
writer and editor Hrant Dink, who was gunned down last week outside
his office.

The media

The assassination of Hrant Dink has caused a media sensation in Turkey.
Just four weeks ago, media buses like these were placed across the
country’s capital to record Turkey’s notoriously buoyant New Year
celebrations. Now they capture a very different national mood: anger
and defiance.

The mourned writer

One of Turkey’s best known Armenian writers, Dink paid the ultimate
price for encouraging reconciliation between his country’s Turkish
and Armenian populations. His insistence on recognising the Armenian
genocide not only landed him in court, but also, it appears, infuriated
ultranationalists enough to want
him dead.

The family

Dink’s immediate family follow directly behind the hearse as it winds
its way through the streets of Istanbul. His daughter Sera marches in
front of the coffin carrying a portrait of her father, as the former
editor’s close friends
and colleagues link arms to f lank the hearse.

The flowers

Crammed on to every overpass and bridge lining the funeral route,
thousands more people clap as the procession goes by and throw
blood-red roses on to the
hearse. Roses have come to symbolise Dink’s assassination, and shrines
bearing his portrait bedecked with the f lowers have sprung up across
the city.

The flagless protest

In a country where Turks are taught from a young age to revere their
country, its f lag and their secular, nationalist founder Kamal
Ataturk, the procession’s anti-nationalist stance is noticeable for
its lack of Turkish f lags, a symbol found f luttering on f lagpoles
across the country.

The placards

Mourners hold placards and wear T-shirts with provocative slogans
(including "We are all Armenians" and "Shoulder to shoulder against
fascism") in Armenian, Turkish and Kurdish. Such condemnation of Dink’s
murderers is astonishing in a country where the use of non-Turkish
languages is controversial.

The route

The procession travels through five miles of unusually traffic-free
Istanbul. It began at the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper where
Dink was editor, winding through Taksim Square and over the Golden
Horn to a small Armenian church, passing some of the city’s most
iconic tourist spots along the way.