Remembering Hrant Dink: a year later

Published: Saturday January 05, 2008

January 19 will be the first anniversary of the murder of Hrant Dink, editor of Istanbul's bilingual Turkish and Armenian weekly, Agos. The sad occasion will be sadder still because so little has changed for the better in Turkey in the year that has elapsed.

News of the murder stunned people inside and outside of Turkey: a prominent advocate of tolerance and peaceful coexistence was gunned down in broad daylight in front of his office in the center of Istanbul.

He was outspoken about the plight of Armenians in Turkey. He spoke openly of the Armenian Genocide. He spoke openly of the ongoing confiscation of Armenian community properties by a Turkish state agency and their sale to right-wing groups. He was certainly not the only Turkish citizen to speak of such things. But he was an Armenian in Turkey, and as such he was expected to apologize for his very existence. His refusal to know his place made him a target for powerful reactionary forces in Turkey. He was repeatedly prosecuted for the words he spoke and wrote. And then he was silenced permanently.

As devastating as news of his murder was, the blow was softened somewhat by the reaction inside Turkey. Over 100,000 people of various backgrounds and from various walks of life came out for his funeral procession, holding signs that said, "We are all Hrant Dink. We are all Armenians." They received supportive applause from people all along the long route of the procession. Day and night for over a week, Turkish television and radio programs introspectively discussed Hrant Dink's life as an Armenian in Turkey, his views, his prosecutions, and his murder; Turkish commentators advocated for changes: Turks must redefine their nationalism, Turkey must amend its laws, in his death, Hrant Dink's message of tolerance should find new converts, they said.

Arrests were made in short order. Someone confessed to the shooting. It was a 17-year-old boy, who apparently had been selected because he would face a lighter sentence than an adult would for the same crime. His alleged mentor also faces charges, as do 11 others. Meanwhile, certain high officials were driven from office for their failure to foil the conspiracy and their failure to protect Hrant Dink.

Looking back now, a year later, however, it is apparent how little has changed.

The low-hanging fruit in this matter was Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code. This is the law that criminalizes "insulting Turkishness." It is the law under which several prominent figures, including Hrant Dink and the Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, have been prosecuted for mentioning the Armenian Genocide. (Hrant Dink, the only Armenian living in Turkey among those charged, was also the only person convicted and sentenced.) As a law that criminalizes speech, it is intolerable.

Efforts to repeal it have gotten nowhere.

Quite to the contrary, who else should have been prosecuted - and found guilty - under the very same law, but Hrant Dink's son Arat, editor-in-chief of Agos, and the newspaper's license holder, Serkis Seropyan? Their crime was to reprint an interview Hrant Dink gave to the Reuters news agency in 2006, in which he said he believed that the events in 1915 were indeed genocide. While many others Turkish media outlets likewise reprinted the interview, a legal complaint was initiated only against Agos. They have been sentenced to one year in prison. The sentence was suspended, which means it hangs over their heads as a warning not to dare say the wrong things again in Agos.

Meanwhile, the case against the alleged conspirators in Hrant Dink's murder is moving along slowly. While prosecutors have been willing to allege a conspiracy, they have been reluctant to look at the encouragement and protection the alleged conspirators likely received from ultranationalists in the military and police apparatus.
The ultranationalist Turkish "deep state" remains powerful and entrenched. And the Turkish state's malice toward Armenians remains unabated.

A law that would limit the confiscation of community endowments and would restore some of them, vetoed by the former president, faces uncertain prospects - even though it is far from adequate from the perspective of minority communities.

The murder has left ethnic Armenian citizens of Turkey afraid for their lives and there is anecdotal evidence, at least, that the number of those leaving their ancestral homeland has grown.

Even an initiative that had the potential to generate trust and goodwill, the restoration of the Armenian cathedral on the island of Aghtamar in Lake Van, was soured by calculated insults delivered by the government. For example, the cross prepared for the top of the Church of the Holy Cross, as part of the restoration, was not installed.

Meanwhile, of course, Turkey has continued to block the border with Armenia and refuses to establish diplomatic relations with Armenia.

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What can we do? How can we help ensure that Turkey gets a better report card on the second and subsequent anniversaries of Hrant Dink's murder?

First, we should pause to remember him this month - in memorial events or in our prayers - as we remember all the earlier victims of Turkish chauvinism.

Second, we should maintain the idealism that Hrant Dink embodied. Here are some of the ideals we articulated in this page almost a year ago: "Turkish society must come to understand that Turkey is just as much the country of Mr. Dink and other Turkish-Armenians as it is the country of his murderers. It must acknowledge Turkey as a multi­ethnic nation built on the ruins of a multiethnic empire. This means acknowledging the Armenian Genocide and dealing with whatever consequences that entails. It means treating Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Kurds, and other minorities as full citizens whose cultures and institutions are protected, prized, and celebrated."