WOULD IT BE TRAITOROUS IF WE WERE ALL HRANT FOR A DAY?
Alin Ozinian

Today’s Zaman
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Jan 27 2009
Turkey

I was in either my first or second year of middle school — I can’t
recall which exactly — but it seems to me that it was the winter
months.

That night, on one of the open forum television programs so common in
that era was a man whose name we were not used to seeing on television
screens. "I am not going to plant trees anymore; now I’m going to
plant things that grow quickly, things like tomatoes, parsley. … I
don’t really see a tree sapling as a tree."

He was talking about the Tuzla Children’s Camp, which had been recently
taken over by the government. It was a camp where he had spent his own
childhood, a camp where he had fallen in love with the woman who was
to be his wife, the camp where he acted as a father figure to other
orphans, and a camp that had fruits on its trees which he was never
able to eat. He was saying: "We are discomforted; we are afraid;
we are victimized by discrimination; we are unable to stand up and
fight for our rights."

I was surprised to hear all this at the time, knowing that these were
things we normally only discussed at home, things which were actually
better never discussed at all. The ground had ears. But now here was
this man, talking about these things out loud. He was talking about
matters having to do with the wealth tax, Sept. 6-7 and the military.

He was not afraid, but his voice was shaking, his eyes were full,
and it seemed as though he would cry. We, too, felt that way. There
were things that really changed that night; Turkey did not become a
more democratic country overnight; it was not suddenly accepted into
the European Union; the Turkish-Armenian borders were not flung open;
the hawks we feared were not magically turned into doves, but what
did happen was that a man was suddenly talking out loud about Armenian
problems. His name was Hrant Dink.

It was sometime during mid-December 2006 that Hrant and I were
speaking together in his office at Agos newspaper. He was commenting
on the points that the Armenian diaspora were angry about, and he
was complaining that the dialogue between Turkey and Armenia was
still insufficient. He said we, the Turkish-Armenians, were the
healthiest. He noted, "Everyone carries around old and judgmental
pictures in their minds, but our friends, neighbors, doctors, lovers
are all Turkish, and these are Turks that are a part of our lives." He
had his doubts; he was not without hope, but there was worry in his
eyes. He said, "I am being targeted," and his voice sounded tired
from these worries.

It was the second week of January 2007. I was in Yerevan, and the
telephone rang. Someone said, "They’ve shot Hrant." I asked, "Where,
which hospital is he in?" "They shot him," said the person calling
me. "Where is he though? Is he badly hurt?" I asked. The person on
the other end just said, "They shot him." It was a voice that told me
of the weeping crowds in front of the Agos newspaper, of the pigeons
in the air, of Hrant’s wife saying, "You have created killers from
babies." People carrying posters and signs in their hands, crowds
saying: "We are all Hrant. We are all Armenian" as one. It was a bad
coincidence; it was winter once again, and just as that evening I
remembered from 10 years before, I was in deep surprise. I recalled
when I had first seen Hrant on the screen. I was a child at the time
and had been excited, filled with hope. But now all these hopes were
shattered and lying on the ground.

The fact that the funeral ceremonies for Hrant turned into a flood of
humans shows how much he was loved and how much those who shot him in
the back were not loved. Actually though, it was not only Turkey that
sheltered those who didn’t like Hrant. There were those who didn’t
like Hrant in the Armenian diaspora also, as well as in Armenia. With
the slaughter of a man who had said: "This fight cannot last forever;
we have lived together for hundreds of years on this soil; Turkey
is changing, we now discuss everything; we will definitely come to
a solution on these problems," voices now rose in protest, asking,
"Wasn’t Turkey supposed to be changing?"

Hrant was targeted by many different sources. But actually, as we all
knew, the real target was Turkey’s democratization and its period
of change. Hrant played a large role in the heating up of Turkey’s
inner dynamics. In one of his speeches, he said, "What happened
to the Armenians has already happened, and the shedding of light
on this problem is so crucial from the perspective of Turkey’s own
democratization and the questioning of its stance on official history."

When he visited Armenia, Hrant would tell people there about his life
in Turkey. He explained that Turks did not chase after Armenians with
axes in their hands. He described the existence of Turkish sorrow
about the events of 1915. He told people how much he loved Turkey
and said there was nowhere else he would want to live.

He would bring with him a few newspapers from Turkey, and he would meet
with people from every circle, talking of the need for a solution,
of a need to open up the borders between Turkey and Armenia. Hrant
told the Armenian diaspora about Turks and reminded Armenians in the
diaspora who didn’t want relations with Turkey about Armenia itself:
"That nation cannot breathe. … It is as comfortable as you."

For two years now, Hrant has been sleeping under the soil of
this nation whose land he never left, even in the most difficult
moments. But differences are still not really accepted on this soil. We
can’t even seem to stand slogans like "We are all Hrant. We are all
Armenian." This despite the fact that, all over Turkey, young Kirkos,
Stavros, Anahits and Rojbins make the oath, without thinking about
their ethnic origins and without shirking, "We are Turkish, we are
right, we are hard-working" in schools across the country. Why does
the "Armenian threat" still exist? Why do we still believe Turks are
waiting for us with axes? We cannot solve our problems without breaking
our preconceptions. If we intend to live together on this soil as one,
then come, let’s give up our identities as Armenian, Turkish, Kurdish,
Jewish, atheist, female and male, and let’s just be Hrant for a day.