Deutsche Presse-Agentur , Germany
Jan 19 2007
Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink shot dead in Istanbul
Ankara – Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was shot dead by an
unknown attacker in Istanbul on Friday, the private NTV television
station reported.
The editor of the Armenian and Turkish language Agos newspaper was
killed as he left the offices of the newspaper Friday afternoon. NTV
reported that police were looking for a man aged around 18 years old
believed to be responsible for the attack.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan later announced that two people
had been detained for questioning.
Dink, 52, had sparked the ire of nationalists in Turkey and was last
year found guilty under Turkey’s notorious Article 301 for having
‘insulting Turkishness’ for comments he had made in his newspaper on
Turkish-Armenian relations.
Prosecutors focused on a quote from an article in Argos newspaper in
which Dink said he had ‘a special call to the Armenians in diaspora
who are getting poisoned by their anger towards the Turks’.
Dink claimed that his aim was deflate tensions between Turkey and
Armenia and was in the process of appealing the conviction.
Dink had earlier been found not guilty of ‘insulting the Turkish
state’ for remarks he said at a conference in 2002 where he stated
that Armenians face discrimination in Turkey.
In his last article written for Argos newspaper Dink said he had
received many death threats and was living under a kind of
psychological torture.
Prime Minister Erdogan said his ‘sadness was great’ and that the
security forces would do whatever needed to be done in order to solve
the crime.
‘This is an attack on freedom of thought and democracy,’ Erdogan
said.
Camiel Eurlings, the European Parliament’s Turkey Rapporteur told NTV
that he was in deep shock over the death of Dink, whom he described
as a close friend.
‘The only thing he wanted to do was express his opinion without the
threat of going to jail,’ Eurlings said adding that Dink had only
ever supported Turkey, ‘not just in front of the cameras but also
behind closed doors.’
Around 70,000 ethnic-Armenians live in Turkey, most in Istanbul.
Armenian numbers were considerably higher, especially in eastern
Anatolia until World War I when the local Armenian population sided
with invading Russian forces.
The Ottoman government ordered the deportation of Armenians living in
the east during which hundreds of thousands of people died.
Armenian historians claim that as many as 1.5 million Christian
Armenians were killed in the deportations and in massacres and that
the actions were a clear genocide.
Turkey admits that there were massacres of Armenians during the
deportations, but vehemently denies that the killings constituted a
genocide.