The International Hrant Dink Award was presented for the sixth time on Hrant Dink’s birthday, Sept. 15, to activist Angie Zelter from Britain and 
Professor Şebnem Korur Fincancı from Turkey’s İstanbul University.
Accepting her award from academic Baskın Oran as well as Hanım Tosun and İkbal Eren, representing the Saturday Mothers, Fincancı said she felt embarrassed because she was receiving this award while she was “merely trying to fulfill the responsibility of being human.”
“I feel embarrassed because this award means so much. I feel embarrassed because in my mind, I have done what needs to be done, and that does not call for an award. I feel embarrassed because what needs to be done is still not readily done in these lands.”
Fincancı also said that although she was incredibly honored, she also felt embarrassed because she was receiving the same award given last year to the Saturday Mothers, who have been looking for their loved ones murdered or abducted by the state for years. “The fact that the ‘Armenian genocide’ is still discussed behind closed doors, the denial of [the rights of] Kurds, the fact that the expelling of people [who have lived in Turkey for centuries] from this land is celebrated every year, that you live with the shame of the fact that in a neighborhood populated by the ever-shrinking Armenian community a school is named Talat Paşa, a road is named Ergenekon, a street is named Türk Beyi, that we feel the plight of all oppressed people in our hearts but that we have failed to dress their wounds,” Fincancı said.
Fincancı, who is also a medical doctor, has dedicated her professional career to a struggle against torture in Turkey. She has been the president of the Turkish Human Rights Foundation (TİHV) since 2009. In the 1990s, when torture was prevalent in Turkey, she was subjected to oppression and obstruction at the hands of the state as she wrote articles on medical ethics and penned reports documenting torture. Fincancı currently teaches and serves as a dissertation advisor at the graduate and postgraduate levels in the department of forensic medicine at İstanbul University’s medical faculty and teaches at Galatasaray University’s faculty of law.
The international Hrant Dink Award is presented annually by the International Hrant Dink Foundation at an award ceremony held on the birthday of Hrant Dink, who was shot dead by an ultranationalist teenager outside the offices of the Turkish-Armenian Agos newspaper in İstanbul in January 2007.
The second award was presented to Zelter by Award Committee head Ali Bayramoğlu and Ziena Alhajj of Greenpeace. Speaking at the award ceremony, Zelter said she was honored and happy to receive the award. “Thank God there are still people like you who know the value of peace and the world. … I have been arrested more than 100 times because of my work as an activist. But these arrests have played a significant role in creating public awareness and media interest about nuclear disarmament and world peace. I will continue to use non-violent and legal methods for world peace.”
In her acceptance speech Zelter also stated that her own country, Britain, systematically violates international law by supporting and trading weapons with some of the most repressive regimes in the world. “Currently, the UK supplies arms to Israel and refuses to condemn Israeli war crimes and breaches of humanitarian law in the occupation of the West Bank and siege of Gaza,” Zelter noted.
Zelter was one of six activists who initiated the Trident Ploughshares campaign, which aimed to disarm the UK Trident nuclear weapons system via non-violent, direct and peaceful means. In 2002, she launched the International Women’s Peace Service — Palestine. In March 2012 she supported a resistance movement against the construction of the Jeju Naval Base on Jeju Island, declared in 2005 a World Peace Island by the South Korean government and home to a number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Each year the award is granted to two individuals, one from Turkey and one from abroad. In addition to the awards, the jury recognizes individuals and institutions that pursue activities in line with the principles of the Hrant Dink Foundation. Those names are announced to the public during the ceremony under the title of “Işıklar” (Sparks).
Speaking to Today’s Zaman, Rakel Dink, the widow of Hrant Dink and the president of the Hrant Dink Foundation, said she was honored to host so many people from many different backgrounds at the Hrant Dink Awards every year. “We are presenting this award for the sixth time in remembrance of Hrant Dink. I want everybody to know we will carry out his peace efforts to the bitter end. We will establish peace together,” Dink told Today’s Zaman.
The jury consisted of renowned academics, writers and historians this year, as it has in previous years. Others who took part in the award jury were well-known political scientist and human rights defender Baskın Oran; Armenian American historian Gerard Libaridian, who specializes in Armenia, the Caucasus and the Near East; American attorney Kenneth Roth, who was drawn to human rights causes through his Jewish father’s experience of fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939; economics Professor Mary Kaldor; human rights advocate Natasha Kandic; sociologist Oya Baydar; and activist Kumi Naidoo. Rakel Dink and members of the Saturday Mothers/People Association also took part in the award jury.
Also speaking to Today’s Zaman, Oran said the legacy of Hrant Dink will continue thanks to the efforts of young generations, who are willing to understand each other better. “We will listen to each other, we will respect each other’s pain and we will establish peace together,” Oran said.
