Kathimerini, Greece
Jan 24 2007
Mourners flood Istanbul
Thousands remember slain Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink
Reuters
Thousands of people marched yesterday across the Unkapani bridge over
the Golden Horn during the funeral procession of Turkish-Armenian
editor Hrant Dink in Istanbul.
By Daren Butler
ISTANBUL – Up to 100,000 people filed silently through Istanbul
yesterday behind the coffin of Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink,
whose murder has stirred debate about the influence of hardline
nationalism in Turkey. From early morning, tearful mourners, many
holding identical black-and-white signs reading "We are all Hrant
Dink" and "We are all Armenians," gathered outside the Agos newspaper
office where Dink was shot three times in broad daylight last Friday.
White doves were released into the air as somber music played. Much
of downtown Istanbul, a sprawling city of some 12 million set on the
Bosporus waterway, was closed to traffic.
A 17-year-old youth, Ogun Samast, has confessed to killing Dink for
"insulting" Turks. A nationalist militant friend of Samast has
admitted inciting Samast to kill Dink, who had worked for
reconciliation between Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks. "We are
seeing off our brother with a silent walk, without slogans and
without asking how a baby became a murderer," Dink’s widow Rakel,
surrounded by her three children, told mourners.
Organizers estimated 100,000 mourners followed the black hearse and
flower-covered coffin on its 8-kilometer (5-mile) journey across
Istanbul and the Golden Horn waterway to an Armenian Orthodox church.
Police said there were tens of thousands. "Seeing this mass of people
gives me courage. There are lots of people against racism and
nationalism," actress Lale Mansur said.
Ministers, foreign diplomats, Armenian government officials and
members of both Turkey’s 60,000-strong Armenian community and the
global Armenian diaspora joined the funeral service. "We still hope
that (Turks)… will accept that the Armenians are Turkish citizens
who have been living on this land for thousands of years and are not
foreigners or potential enemies," Armenian Patriarch Mesrob II told
the mourners. Dink was buried at the Balikli Armenian Cemetery.
Dink, like dozens of other intellectuals including Nobel Literature
Laureate Orhan Pamuk, had been prosecuted for his views on the
massacres of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915. Turkish
nationalists, including senior politicians, see intellectuals’ calls
for Turkey to own up to its role in the massacres as a threat to
national security and honour. "This (murder) is not an exceptional
case but the result of a poisonous nationalist atmosphere. Turkey’s
credibility abroad has hit rock bottom," said Vural Oger, a leading
Turkish-German businessman and politician.
