Today marks the 10th anniversary since the assassination of Hrant Dink, the founding editor-in-chief of the Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos.
Tens of thousands in Istanbul will head to the editorial office today to commemorate the slain journalist and intellectual who is firmly believed to have fallen victim to his outspoken criticism of the Turkish authorities, their discriminatory policies towards ethnic minorities and denial of the Armenian Genocide.
“There are Turks who don’t admit that their ancestors committed genocide. If you look at it though, they seem to be nice people… So why don’t they admit it? Because they think that genocide is a bad thing which they would never want to commit, and because they can’t believe their ancestors would do such a thing either,” he said.
Dink was gunned down in broad daylight outside his office on January 19, 2007.
“10 Years without Dink” is the slogan of this year’s commemoration events.
Ten years ago today, people headed to the site “to eternalize Dink” (as his wife, Rachel, would say). And they did it. But he was alone before – both in his article “Lyrical Solitude” and the in front of Turkish nationalists in court – where only two or three friends would attend the hearings to offer their support to Dink. But Hrant’s bright presence later filled the hearts of millions of people who re-found and reshaped, and reproduced themselves and their own lives and relationships, as well as their own past.
“I had Armenian roots before Hrant[’s assassination]; now I am an Armenian,” says Selin, a character depicted in Turkish writer Leila Niazi’s novel “Talking to Each Other”.
Hrant, a son of Armenians from Sebastia (currently Sivas), was born on September 15, 1954 in the Western Armenian province of Malatia. In 1960, the six-year old boy migrated to Istanbul with two younger brothers; without a home to live, the three spend one cold winter day outside the Armenian Patriarchate then.
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