HRANT DINK’S BOOK "TWO CLOSE PEOPLE, TWO FAR NEIGHBORS" RELEASED IN ARMENIAN
Noyan Tapan
Dec 23, 2009
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 23, NOYAN TAPAN. "Two Close People, Two Far
Neighbors" book by Hrant Dink, the assassinated editor-in-chief
of Agos daily, has been released in Armenian with the support of
Hrant Dink International Foundation. Its presentation took place
at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the RA National Academy of
Sciences on December 23. The book contains the author’s contemplation
on relations between Armenia and Turkey and displays an entirely new
approach to building the common furture of the two countries.
The book was published in Turkish in 2008, 18 months after Hrant
Dink’s murder. In the words of Mkrtich Somundjian who had translated
the book, he had difficulty finding the Turkish version. H. Dink’s
brother Yervand Dink helped him in this issue.
M. Somundjian said that this book provides the Armenian public with
an opportunity to learn more about H. Dink. "It is necessary to speak
more about his legacy rather than about his tragic death. The book is
quite interesting and it is well worth reading", the translator stated.
The Armenian Minister of Diaspora Ms. Hranush Hakobian said
that the primary wish of Hrant Dink as a Turkish citizen was the
Armenian-Turkish normalization and the opening of borders. "When I
took an unpublished version of the book in my hand, I read it without
a moment’s respite as it was just impossible to leave it unfinished.
Each footnote contains deep thoughts. Dink wished that there would be
peace in our region," she said, adding that Dink’s pain regarding the
genocide was evident, and he used to say that "if a person is displaced
from his native land in a gilt plane, all the same it is genocide".
According to the political scientist Alexander Iskandarian, Hrant Dink
did consider Western Armenia an ordinary place where Armenians used to
live at one time, nor was it a grief over a lost homeland. "To him,
Armenia was a viable native land. His Armenia was neither dead nor
deplorable: it was breathing. And geography has no relation in this
issue," he said.
1,000 copies of the book were printed. It is already available in
bookstores.