Agence France Presse — English
January 20, 2007 Saturday
Greece says journalist’s ‘atrocious’ murder means to hurt Turkey’s EU
course
Greece on Saturday condemned the "atrocious" murder" of
Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink as an intended blow to
Turkey’s efforts to join the European Union.
"The atrocious murder of Hrant Dink, a man who fought for the
fundamental right of freedom of speech, is directly aimed at the
efforts of the Turkish people to win their European future," Greek
Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis said in a statement.
Greece has publicly supported Turkey’s efforts to join the EU bloc
despite a deep-rooted regional rivalry and tension over the continued
division of Cyprus, whose northern third Turkey seized in 1974 in
response to an Athens-engineered Greek Cypriot coup aimed at uniting
the island with Greece.
Editor of the weekly Agos newspaper, Dink died when an unidentified
gunman shot him three times in the head and neck outside his office
in Istanbul.
The 53-year-old journalist had questioned official versions of
history in Turkey relating to the massacres of Armenians between 1915
and 1918 in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire, which drew the
wrath of nationalists and the judiciary.