Published since 1951
Published on January 22, 2007
SOME TURKISH ARMENIANS FEARFUL AFTER KILLING
- Istanbul's Armenian community has suffered shock and anger over the murder of a leading Turkish-Armenian journalist, causing some to fear nationalism is rising and more attacks could follow. An unemployed teenager has confessed to Friday's shooting of Hrant Dink in an attack that has raised questions about Turkey's tolerance for minorities and freedom of expression. Thousands of Armenians, Turks and others lit candles and laid carnations and pictures of Dink outside his newspaper office in central Istanbul where he was shot. "We thought that all of this was behind us, but there are still people who want to kill us because we are Armenian and because we want to talk about what happened in 1915," said Ardas Cavusan, 56, an Armenian lathe operator. Many Armenians believe Dink was targeted because he wanted Turkey to acknowledge the mass killings of Armenians here during World War One as genocide. Turkish nationalists see the genocide claims as an insult to national honour. Turkey's 60,000-strong Armenian community, possibly fearing reprisals, has largely avoided sensitive historical issues although the Armenian Diaspora has campaigned globally for recognition of the genocide. The murder of Dink, 52, who had tried to promote reconciliation between Muslim Turks and Christian Armenians, has triggered anger as well as sorrow. "The government has to do something about this. Since the Ottoman Empire, Armenians have been killed, and it's still happening today. Hrant was just the latest victim," said Mahil Calis, 33, a textile worker. "Now the Turkish government has to recognise the genocide as a matter of conscience." Textile worker Calis, who sends his daughter to a state-run Armenian school, was also worried. "Of course there's a reason to be afraid. I have a daughter who goes to school, and you never know what can happen. It's not easy to live under this kind of pressure. There are repercussions if we say what we want," he said. Armenian sculptor Hagop Pacaci, 42, said he led out little hope that Dink's murder would bring inter-ethnic reconciliation. "People will stay silent. We have great experience of this. In the coming years we will be buried in silence," he said. Turkey denies claims that 1.5 million Armenians perished on its territory in a systematic genocide during World War One. It says both Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks died in large numbers as the multi-ethnic, multi-confessional Ottoman Empire collapsed. Ankara also says many Armenians had been collaborating with invading Russian troops in eastern Turkey. The Diaspora has lobbied for decades to have the genocide recognised, and some foreign parliaments have done so. Radical Armenian nationalists also shot dozens of Turkish diplomats and their family members from the 1970s to the 1990s in revenge attacks for the massacres. Armenians are an officially recognised minority in modern Turkey, but the community complains of continued prejudice and discrimination. They hope that Turkey's efforts to join the European Union will lead to greater freedom and tolerance. Turkey's pro-EU centre-right government, which faces a strong nationalist challenge in a parliamentary election due in November, has proposed forming a joint commission of Turkish and Armenian historians to study archives from the period. But Armenia, which shares a border with Turkey that is closed due to a territorial row, has rejected the proposal. It says the genocide is an established historic fact. Among the mourners outside Dink's office on Sunday, one elderly man yelled: "People like Hrant will not be stopped. The truth will be told. Unlike Hrant it can't be shot from behind." Dozens of Turkish writers and intellectuals, including Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk, have been prosecuted for comments on the massacres of Armenians. Pamuk was let off on a technicality but Dink had been given a six-month suspended sentence for comments he made about Armenians and Turks. (AP-Photolur photo: Demonstrators carry a banner that reads: "Damn to murderers of Hrant Dink!" during a protest in downtown Istanbul on Friday.)
- By Thomas Grove, Reuters
Discussion
- ayse wrote:
dont tell like these silly things...armenian turks have always lived and will live in these land!!!u, silly-two-faces pigs wont seperate us from each others!!!!!! - Edward Called Enoch wrote:
The best thing for the writers of Turkey to do is call for a creative punishment for the teenage thug who killed DINK. Make the European Union a partner in judgment by causing the Turkish government to make the 17 year old to study the writings of Dink and have him write articles to dispute with facts the arguments of Dink... Encourage him to excel in scholarship by giving him basic bread (fortified with all the vitamins & nutrition given in NY city jails) and water until he produces reasonable writings of merit equal to the writings of Dink. In this way the punishment fits the crime. A scholar was taken a scholar should be made. Once established re education of this by product of a Nazi nation his diet could be made normal prison food. In this way the writings of Dink will accomplish its greatest goal, His work will live in those that thought a bullet could stop the truth with in all of us. Death of teenage thug serves no purpose at all but reward those who created him they are the ones who should die. The teenage thug is of no value to anyone now not even himself his death would be an insult to writers every where because it would show that the government can manipulate a nation quieting those who seek to tell the truth. In this way the right of free press will be born in the hearts of those who seek to murder it one voice one person at a time. - ayse wrote:
im curious of smth ,Edward!!!where do u live?if u live in the usa, u cant judge my government being a diaspora armenian,cos u believe what has been told to u, u decide about us without visiting my country...i hope u understand what i mean...
690 days before | 
Headlines for January 22, 2007
ARMENIANS MOURN SLAIN ISTANBUL EDITOR
By Emil Danielyan and Astghik Bedevian
Armenia’s leading political parties, religious leaders and civil society representatives have joined official Yerevan in condemning the shock assassination of Hrant Dink, the prominent Turkish-Armenian ...TURK NATIONALIST ‘CONFESSES TO INCITING DINK’S SLAYING’
By Benjamin Harvey, Associated Press
A nationalist militant convicted in a 2004 bomb attack at a McDonald's restaurant has confessed to inciting last week's slaying of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, police in Turkey said ...SOME TURKISH ARMENIANS FEARFUL AFTER KILLING
By Thomas Grove, ReutersIstanbul's Armenian community has suffered shock and anger over the murder of a leading Turkish-Armenian journalist, causing some to fear nationalism is rising and more attacks could follow. An ...ANOTHER ARMENIAN SOLDIER KILLED AT AZERI BORDER
By Emil DanielyanAn Armenian army soldier was shot dead on Monday in what the Defense Minister in Yerevan described as a violation of ceasefire by Azerbaijani forces. A ministry statement said Armen Malkhasian, 18, was ...
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© AUA
Today in Armenian history- 1872 Death of writer Petros Durian. He was born in1851.
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