Agence France Presse — English
January 19, 2007 Friday
Prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist shot dead in Istanbul
by Nicolas Cheviron
Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, targeted by nationalist
circles and the courts for his views on the 1915-18 killings of
Armenians, was shot dead outside his office here Friday in what was
immediately branded a "political assassination".
A local official announced that three people were detained in
connection with the murder as thousands took to the streets in
protest and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged to quickly
catch the perpetrators of what he termed "an attack on freedom of
thought".
"There are three people in custody. We are very close to solving the
case. We have definitive evidence," Istanbul governor Muammer Guler
told reporters here, the Anatolia news agency reported.
The 53-year-old Dink was shot at the entrance of his newspaper’s
offices in the busy Sisli district, on the European side of the city,
an employee of the weekly Agos newspaper which he edited told AFP.
The NTV news channel said Dink died instantly after being shot in the
head and in the neck.
Police were looking for a man in his late teens, wearing a denim
jacket and a white cap, NTV said, while the Anatolia news agency
reported that witnesses saw a man in his late twenties running from
the scene.
Dink’s lawyer, Erdal Dogan, told the CNN-Turk news channel that his
client had been receiving threats, but had not requested police
protection.
In his latest column dated January 10, Dink wrote of a "considerable
group of people who see me as an enemy of the Turks," saying he had
received letters "full of anger and menace."
Some 5,00O protestors — many carrying red carnations and pictures of
Dink with the inscription "My dear brother" in Turkish, Armenian and
English — gathered outside the Agos offices, demanding justice.
"We are all Armenians, We are all Hrant Dink," chanted the
protestors.
In the capital Ankara, about 700 people — mainly trade unionists and
human rights activists — held a peaceful sit-in in central Kizilay
square, Anatolia reported.
The spiritual leader of Turkey’s 80,000 Armenians, Patriarch Mesrob
II proclaimed a 15-day period of mourning for Dink.
Erdogan strongly condemned what he termed a "heinous murder" and said
he had told his justice and interior ministers to investigate the
killing and sent them to Istanbul.
"I stress that the attack on Dink is an attack on us all — on our
unity, our integrity, our peace and stability," Erdogan said. "This
is an attack against freedom of thought and our democratic way of
life."
Justice Minister Cemil Cicek pledged to expend every means to throw
light on the murder, underlining that the investigation would be
pursued "in secrecy for a while" in order to properly collect all the
evidence and catch suspects.
The United States, the European Union and Armenia also condemned the
murder which Dink’s colleagues and friends said was politically
motivated.
"This is clearly a political murder. It is a planned and premediatetd
killing," said Derya Sazak, a columnist for the liberal daily
Milliyet.
Dink, a well-known and respected journalist, drew the wrath of the
judiciary and Turkish nationalists with his remarks on the World War
I killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, which preceded the
Turkish republic.
But he always insisted that he was a citizen of Turkey and would
never work against his country.
In July, the appeals court upheld a suspended six-month sentence
against him for an article he wrote on the collective memory of the
massacres.
His conviction was the first under the infamous Article 301 of the
new Turkish penal code, which deals with "insulting Turkishness" and
has since been used to prosecute several other intellectuals, to
widespread criticism from the European Union which Turkey is seeking
to join.
Dink was on trial in another freedom-of-speech case, in which he
risked up to three years in jail, on charges of attempting to
influence the judiciary in an editorial criticizing his first
conviction.
In September, an Istanbul prosecutor filed yet another suit against
him, seeking three years for describing the killings as genocide in
an interview.
Married with three children, Dink had been Agos’s editor since its
launch in 1996.
Public debate on the Armenian massacres has only recently begun in
Turkey, often sending nationalist sentiment into a frenzy.
Armenians claim up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered and
want the massacres to be internationally recognized as genocide.
Turkey rejects the genocide label and argues that 300,000 Armenians
and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians took
up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia, and sided with invading
Russian troops as the Ottoman Empire crumbled during World War I.