Journalist known for
speaking out about mass killings of Armenians
January 19, 2007
ISTANBUL,-- Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant
Dink, targeted by the courts for his views on the
1915-18 killings of Armenians, has been shot dead
outside his office in Istanbul.
"Dink was shot in front of the office and he is
dead," a tearful employee of weekly Agos which he
edited told AFP Friday.
The NTV news channel said the 53-year-old Dink died
on the spot after an unidentified assailant shot him
at the entrance to his newspaper's offices in the
Sisli district on the European side of the city.
Television footage showed Dink's body, covered with
a white sheet, behind a police line keeping back a
crowd of onlookers.
Police were looking for a young man, believed to be
18 or 19 years of age, wearing a denim jacket and a
white cap.
NTV said he was shot twice in the head and once in
the neck. |
┼ Armenian Journalist Hrant Dink in his Istanbul
office in November. Photo: AP |
|
Dink, well-known and respected in Turkish
journalism, attracted the wrath of the Turkish
judiciary and nationalist circles with his remarks
on the killings of Armenians under the Ottoman
Empire, Turkey's predecessor, during the First World
War.
In July, the appeals court upheld a suspended
six-month sentence against him for an article about
the collective memory of the killings, which many
countries recognize as genocide.
He was also on trial in another freedom-of-speech
case, in which he risks up to three years in jail,
on charges of attemptoing to influence the judiciary
in an editorial that criticized his first
conviction.
In September, an Istanbul prosecutor launched
another trial against him, demanding three years for
Dink for describing the killings as genocide in
remarks to an international news agency.
"Of course, I say this is a genocide. Because the
result itself identifies what it is and gives it a
name. You can see that people who have been living
on these lands for 4,000 years have disappeared.
This is self explanatory," Dink said in the
interview.
In all the cases launched against him, Dink was
convicted or charged under an infamous penal code
article on "insulting Turkishness", which has been
used to prosecute dozens of other intellectuals,
mostly for views on the Armenia massacres.
Public debate on the 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 campaign for 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
Russian troops invading the crumbling Ottoman Empire
during World War I.
AFP
First world war
massacres | Related
issue:
Armenian Genocide by Turkish Muslims against
Christians
Turkey faces international pressure to recognise
that more than 1 million Armenians were massacred
during a 1915 campaign of ethnic cleansing by
Ottoman Turks. Turkish officials claim that most
deaths were caused by hunger and disease.
The use of the term
"Kurdistan" is vigorously rejected due to its
alleged political implications by the Republic of
Turkey, which does not recognize the existence of a
"Turkish Kurdistan" Southeast Turkey. The Kurds have
no rights in Turkey.
Others estimate as many as 40 million Kurds live in
Big Kurdistan (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia),
which covers an area as big as France, about half of
all Kurds which estimate to 20 million live in
Turkey.
The Kurdish flag flown officially in Iraqi Kurdistan
but unofficially flown by Kurds in Armenia. The flag
is banned in Iran, Syria, and Turkey where flying it
is a criminal offence"
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan (
Kurdistan-Turkey) wikipedia
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