SomaliNet, Somalia
Jan 24 2007

Turkey: Thousands mourn slain editor
Wed. January 24, 2007 08:23 am.

by Bonny Apunyu

(SomaliNet) Sprits were low among thousands of Turks who gathered on
Tuesday in Istanbul to pay tribute to slain Turkish Armenian editor
Hrant Dink, whose murder has caused a lot of debate in Turkey.

On Tuesday morning, several mourners, many holding identical
black-and-white signs reading "We are all Hrant Dink" and "We are all
Armenians", gathered outside the Agos newspaper office where Dink was
shot three times in broad daylight last Friday.

Much of Istanbul was closed to traffic.

Ogun Samast, 17, has confessed to killing Mr Dink for "insulting"
Turks. A source said a nationalist militant friend of Samast has
admitted to police that he incited Samast to kill Dink.

"We are seeing off our brother with a silent walk, without slogans
and without asking how a baby became a murderer," Dink’s widow Rakel
told thousands of mourners.

The killing was viewed with concern abroad, where there is a large
and politically influential Armenian diaspora.

A more liberal attitude to national minorities is also one of the
demands of the European Union Turkey seeks to join.

Mr Dink, like dozens of other intellectuals, had been prosecuted for
his views on the massacres of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915 a
very sensitive issue in Turkey.