RECENT NEWS ITEMS WITH AN ARMENIAN CONNECTION
TURKS GRIEVE OVER JOURNALIST'S KILLING ISTANBUL, Turkey (CNN) -- Angry, saddened Turks took to the streets of Istanbul and other cities Friday night to mourn the death of a prominent Turkish journalist of Armenian descent who was gunned down earlier in the day in front of his newspaper office. Hrant Dink was editor of the Armenian-Turkish-language weekly Agos newspaper. He was known for speaking out against the killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire early in the last century and being in trouble with the law because of his remarks about that topic. The killing shocked all of Turkey, where Dink also has earned a reputation for promoting dialogue between Turks and Armenians, backing open borders between Turkey and the nation of Armenia, and expressing a love of his Turkish homeland. Protesters in Istanbul walked slowly and somberly Friday night, holding candles, wielding banners and waving flags. They carried signs and chanted phrases such as "We are all Hrant Dink and we are all Armenians." Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other government officials denounced the crime, and authorities vowed to find the killer. Erdogan said the attack was a "shock" and an "insult" to the Turkish nation and a "dark day" -- not only for Dink's family but also for all of Turkey. "The dark hands that killed him will be found and punished," Erdogan said in televised remarks. Authorities are looking into a lead that Dink was shot by a man who appeared to be 18 or 19 years old. Dink's body could be seen covered with a white sheet in front of the newspaper's entrance before an emergency vehicle came to take it away. He was said to be in his early 50s. Editor addressed Armenian-Turk issues squarely Described as a "well-known commentator on Armenian affairs," Dink had been called into court a number of times on allegations of "insulting" the Turkish state in his writing. "Some of the trial hearings have been marred by violent scenes inside and outside the courtrooms, instigated by nationalist activists calling for Dink to be punished," says a profile on the Web site of PEN American Center -- the writers' group that defends free expression. Agos was established in 1996, and Dink didn't shy away from dealing with the controversies in that region over the killings of Armenians from 1915 through 1917 -- a hot-button issue in Turkey. Armenians and other countries regard those killings as genocide, a claim rejected by the Turkish government, which says Armenians and Turks were killed in civil warfare. Andrew Finkel, a journalist in Turkey and a friend of Dink's, emphasized that Dink's killing was "a tragedy" for a country attempting to come to terms with its past. Finkel said resentment toward Dink existed among ultranationalist Turks, and the people who staged "ugly scenes" at his trials are the same ones who staged rallies directed at Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Prize-winning Turkish writer who faced charges of insulting Turkishness as well. He described Dink as a bright and brash man who was a well-known figure in Istanbul and an advocate for Turkey's small Armenian community -- a once-populous group now numbering around 60,000 or 70,000. "If anything, he was a great Turkish patriot," Finkel told CNN. "Mr. Dink, for all the libels against him, for all the opposition that was against him in certain sections of the right-wing Turkish press, was really in favor of Turkish and Armenian neighbors being able to look each other in their face and recognize their past histories. He was a courageous man who died in a terrible way." Joel Campagna, Mideast program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said, "Like dozens of other Turkish journalists, Hrant Dink has faced political persecution because of his work. Now it appears he's paid the ultimate price for it." Campagna said that Turkey "must ensure that this crime does not go unpunished like other cases in the past and that those responsible for his murder are brought to justice." He said that over the last 15 years, 18 Turkish journalists have been killed -- making the country the eighth deadliest in the world for journalists in that period. He said many of the deaths took place in the early 1990s, at the peak of the Kurdish separatist insurgency. Reporters Without Borders, another journalists' advocacy group, also said a proper investigation is needed, underscoring its position that "this will be a key test for a country that hopes to join the European Union. No one would understand if Turkey failed to do everything possible to shed light on this tragedy." Turkey has long sought membership in the EU. Provocative articles prompt charges PEN American Center said Dink's publication sought to "provide a voice to the Armenian community and create a dialogue between Turks and Armenians." The group said that before his killing, "Dink had complained of death threats he was receiving from nationalists." "We are horrified," said Larry Siems, director of Freedom to Write and International Programs at PEN American Center. "Hrant Dink was one of the heroes of the nonviolent movement for freedom of expression in Turkey." PEN listed some of the cases that made Dink a controversial figure:
Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, told CNN that the case is the "product of the environment that the Turkish government has created" -- its persistent denial that the killings of the Armenians last century did not amount to genocide. Said Hamparian: "Turkey needs to come to grips with its past."
TURKISH-ARMENIAN WRITER SHUNNED SILENCE Hrant Dink spoke with quiet intensity about Turkey's most controversial issue. He wrote about it openly and bravely. His murder is another challenge to the forces of modernisation in a country locked in a bitter internal debate about how it should deal with its past. Dink was very clear about had happened to his ancestors in 1915, in the fading years of the Ottoman Empire. He called it genocide, and said the word did not need to be accepted by other Turks for it to remain true in his mind. The Turkish state admits that hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed in 1915 in widespread fighting on the eastern front of World War I. But it disputes the genocide charge, and the suggestion that the death toll was well over a million. Dink broke taboos by discussing the killings of 1915 so openly He also challenged other pre-conceptions - it was his newspaper for example that reported that the adopted daughter of Turkey's founding father, Kemal Ataturk, was in fact an Armenian orphan whose father had been killed in 1915. No bitterness But he lacked some of the visceral bitterness towards modern Turkey that can be found within the Armenian diaspora. Many Armenians say Turkey should be punished, that it should pay huge financial compensation, for the actions of the Ottoman leadership. Hrant Dink's view was that Turkey needs to come to terms with its history, and accept that enormous wrongs were committed in the past. But he also had Turkish friends and supporters. In one interview he said the difference between him and Armenians abroad was that he was living with the Turks of today, while they were still living with the Turks of 1915. In fact there are tens of thousands of Armenians in modern Istanbul - they have their own churches, their own schools. As long as they do not raise the past too publicly, as Hrant Dink did, they are left to get on with life. It is in eastern Anatolia, in eastern Turkey, that the Armenians and their culture have all but disappeared. Where there were more than a million Armenians 100 years ago, there are only a few scattered families left. Silence has brought a degree of protection to Turkey's remaining Armenian communities. But Hrant Dink refused to be silent. It brought him into constant conflict with the law. And in some eyes it made him a traitor. Scared In a newspaper column written just this week, Dink said he had received many death threats by e-mail, his computer was full of them, and that he was scared. Tragically, he was right to be so. Political leaders in Turkey have been quick to condemn the murder. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called it an attack on national unity. All too late for Hrant Dink, who said he had received no protection from the authorities despite his complaints. Dink ended his last column by predicting that 2007 would be difficult, but that he would survive it. "For me, 2007 is likely to be a hard year," he wrote. "The trials will continue, new ones will be started. Who knows what other injustices I will be up against."
Amnesty International UK TURKEY: MURDER OF JOURNALIST DEPLORED Amnesty International deplores the murder in Turkey today of prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink The organisation believes that he was targeted because of his work as a journalist who championed freedom of expression. Hrant Dink, editor of the newspaper Agos and contributor to the influential daily Zaman, was reportedly shot three times earlier today in Istanbul outside the Agos offices. Mr Dink, 53, was a passionate promoter of the universality of human rights who appeared on different platforms with human rights activists, journalists and intellectuals across the political spectrum. Best known for his willingness to debate openly and critically issues of Armenian identity and official versions of history in Turkey relating to the massacres of Armenians in 1915, Dink also wrote widely on issues of democratisation and human rights. Amnesty International Europe and Central Asia Programme Director Nicola Duckworth said: "In Turkey there are still a number of harsh laws which endorse the suppression of freedom of speech." "These laws, coupled with persistent official statements by senior government, state and military officials condemning critical debate and dissenting opinion, create an atmosphere in which violent attacks can take place." Last year, Hrant Dink was prosecuted for the third time on charges of 'denigrating Turkishness' under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code. Amnesty International called for the repeal of that law and condemned his prosecution as part of a pattern of judicial harassment against him for peacefully expressing his dissenting opinion. Mr Dink had already been given a six-month suspended prison sentence in July 2006 following an October 2005 conviction on charges of 'denigrating Turkishness'. Amnesty International calls on the Turkish authorities to condemn all forms of intolerance, to uphold the rights of all citizens of the Turkish Republic and to investigate the murder of Hrant Dink thoroughly and impartially, to make the findings of the investigation public - and to bring suspected perpetrators to justice in accordance with international fair trial standards.
AWARD-WINNING WRITER SHOT BY ASSASSIN IN ISTANBUL STREET By Robert Fisk The Independent: 20 January 2007 Hrant Dink became the 1,500,001st victim of the Armenian genocide yesterday. An educated and generous journalist and academic - editor of the weekly Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos - he tried to create a dialogue between the two nations to reach a common narrative of the 20th century's first holocaust. And he paid the price: two bullets shot into his head and two into his body by an assassin in the streets of Istanbul yesterday afternoon. It was not only a frightful blow to Turkey's surviving Armenian community but a shattering reversal to Turkey's hope of joining the European Union, a visionary proposal already endangered by the country's broken relations with Cyprus and its refusal to acknowledge the genocide for what it was: the deliberate mass killing of an entire race of Christian people - 1,500,000 in all - by the country's Ottoman Turkish government in 1915. Winston Churchill was among the first to call it a holocaust but to this day, the Turkish authorities deny such a definition, ignoring documents which Turkey's own historians have unearthed to prove the government's genocidal intent. The 53-year-old journalist, who had two children, was murdered at the door of his newspaper. Just over a year ago, he was convicted under Turkey's notorious law 301 of "anti-Turkishness", a charge he strenuously denied even after he received a six-month suspended sentence from an Istanbul court. The EU has demanded that Turkey repeal the law under which the country also tried to imprison Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk. At the time of his trial, Dink appeared on Turkish television in tears. "I'm living together with Turks in this country," he said then. "And I'm in complete solidarity with them. I don't think I could live with an identity of having insulted them in this country." It is a stunning irony that Dink had accused his fellow Armenians in an article of allowing their enmity towards the Turks for the genocide to have a "poisoning effect on your blood" - and that the court took the article out of context and claimed he was referring to Turkish blood as poisonous. Dink told news agency reporters in 2005 that his case had arisen from a question on what he felt when, at primary school, he had to take a traditional Turkish oath: "I am a Turk, I am honest, I am hard-working." In his defence, Dink said: "I said that I was a Turkish citizen but an Armenian and that even though I was honest and hard-working, I was not a Turk, I was an Armenian." He did not like a line in the Turkish national anthem that refers to "my heroic race". He did not like singing that line, he said, "because I was against using the word 'race', which leads to discrimination". Pamuk had earlier faced a court for talking about the 1915 genocide in a Swiss magazine. Leading Turkish publishers say that there is now an incendiary atmosphere in Turkey towards all writers who want to tell the truth about the genocide, when vast areas of Turkish Armenia were dispossessed of their Christian populations. Tens of thousands of men were massacred by Turkish gendarmerie - and by Kurds - while many Armenian women and children were raped and butchered in the northern Syrian deserts. The few survivors still alive have described the burning of living Armenian children on bonfires. In fact, a book published in Turkey and in the United States by Turkish scholar Tamer Akcam gives documentary details of the orders passed down from the Ottoman government in what was then Constantinople for the deliberate and industrialised killing of the Armenians. Thousands were also suffocated in underground caves in what were the world's first gas chambers. Adolf Hitler asked his generals in 1939: "Who remembers the Armenians?" And he went on to begin the Holocaust of the Jews of Poland. Whether the police discover that Dink's murderer is a Turkish nationalist - or even, though it might seem inconceivable, an Armenian nationalist outraged by his earlier remarks - will be an important proof of the country's willingness to confront its past.
Jasper Gerard My wife is only alive because her great-grandmother hid in a laundry basket, peeking through slats as troops bayoneted the rest of her family to death. She is crying upstairs as I write because history stubbornly refuses to move on. A fellow Armenian, a newspaper editor, has been shot dead in Istanbul. His mistake? Reminding Turkey it still hasn't apologised for - or even admitted - the genocide of 1.2m Armenians under the cover of the First World War. Hrant Dink had already been convicted of this 'crime', for which Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's greatest novelist, was also prosecuted. Just imagine if a British editor was gunned down and men in size 12s bundled off Martin Amis for, say, daring to mention Bloody Sunday. There would be riots in London Fields. But because it's in Turkey, a moderate Muslim state needed in the War on Terror, Brits who normally speak for the marginalised are watching Big Brother. They shrug: 'Let's fight the new war, not the old.' The problem is, it is the same war, and as Dink's bloodied body suggests, there has never really been a ceasefire. To qualify, this is not all about religion, about Muslims (Turks) versus Christians (Armenians): nationalism as much as religion prevents Turkey uttering the fearful 'sorry'. But if Armenians weren't Christian, would Turkey have refused for so long? And would the West have been quite so squeamish about pressuring Ankara? In extreme cases, Islamicists trade on Western self-abasement. So in Britain last week it was claimed a terrorist suspect took refuge in a mosque. Police refused to enter for 'cultural easons'. Would they have been so polite if an IRA suspect had holed up in a Catholic church? Another man allegedly involved in a plot to bomb targets in London was said to have fled in a burka, knowing no policeman would dare frisk him. Turkey still doesn't acknowledge Armenia. Its Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, condemns the murder, but it was he who outlawed so-called attacks on the state. He has also stepped up nationalistic and Islamic tub-thumping, so while his condolences seem sincere, they are about as valuable as a discourse on multiculturalism from Jade Goody. And this is the guy with whom Tony Blair wants to chew over European integration. Istanbul dazzles. On frequent trips, I see the clash of civilisations fought, not in mosques but in Moschino: the devil might wear Prada, but so now do many of Allah's followers. Materialism, not spiritualism, will win this war. Mama might be shrouded in black, but her daughter might be a short-skirted babe hopping into her boyfriend's open-top Mini. Most Turks want progress, and we should help them. America, with a Democrat Congress, should shortly join France in recognising the genocide. Winston Churchill once called it a holocaust. What a paradox that just as Europe starts to consider outlawing Holocaust denial, Turkey outlaws holocaust admittance. Hitler famously reckoned he would get away with his Final Solution after studying Turkey's first solution. 'Who,' he asked 'remembers the Armenians?' The torchlit procession of all nationalities weaving tearfully through Istanbul suggests that, finally, the entire world remembers. jaspergerard@yahoo.co.uk
Web-links to Dink Murder Coverage http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SijWiIB5wkc
http://www.guardian.co.uk/turkey/story/0,,1995757,00.html
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/21/opinion/web.0121turkey.oped.php
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2174987.ece
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/22/wturkey22.xml
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2559534,00.html
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/c106f198-a9bd-11db-9185-0000779e2340.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6283765.stm
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