Hrant Dink

Hrant Dink (; Western ; 15 September 1954 – 19 January 2007) was a Turkish-Armenian journalist, founder and editor-in-chief of Agos. As editor-in-chief of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, Dink was a prominent member of the Armenian minority in Turkey best known for advocating Turkish–Armenian reconciliation and human and minority rights in Turkey. He was often critical of both Turkey's denial of the Armenian genocide and of the Armenian diaspora's campaign for its international recognition. Dink was prosecuted three times for "insulting Turkishness", while receiving numerous death threats from Turkish nationalists.

Dink was assassinated in Istanbul on 19 January 2007 by Ogün Samast, a 17-year-old Turkish nationalist. Dink was shot three times in the head dying instantly. Photographs of the assassin flanked by smiling Turkish police and gendarmerie, posing with the killer side by side in front of the Turkish flag, surfaced. The photos sparked a scandal in Turkey, prompting a spate of investigations and the removal from office of those involved. Samast was later sentenced to 22 years in prison by a Turkish court. He was released on parole for "good behaviour" on 15 November 2023, after spending 16 years and 10 months in prison. At Dink's funeral, over one hundred thousand mourners marched in protest of the assassination, chanting, "We are all Armenians" and "We are all Hrant Dink". Criticism of Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code became increasingly vocal after his death, leading to parliamentary proposals for repeal. The 2007–2008 academic year at the College of Europe was named in his honour.

Early life Hrant Dink was born in Malatya on 15 September 1954, the eldest of three sons to Sarkis Dink (known as Haşim Kalfa), a tailor from Gürün, Sivas, and Gülvart Dink, from Kangal, Sivas. The orphanage children spent their summers at the Tuzla Armenian Children's Camp, on the Marmara beachfront in a suburb of İstanbul, building and improving the summer camp during their stay.

During his senior year, he was expelled from the Üsküdar Surp Haç, and completed his high school degree at the Şişli Public High School. Born in 1959 in Silopi, Cizre, Rakel was one of 13 children of Siyament Yağbasan, head of the Varto clan and Delal Yağbasan who died when Rakel was a child.

Staying at the Tuzla Camp during summers and at the Gedikpaşa Orphanage during winters, Rakel learned Turkish and Armenian, and finished primary school. One year later, at Rakel Dink's insistence, the couple conducted a church wedding ceremony on 23 April 1977.

Religious beliefs Dink was baptized and married within the Armenian Apostolic Church, but was educated and sheltered at Armenian Protestant institutions and received his introduction to religion within the Protestant sphere. Dink was a member of the Armenian Evangelical Church of Gedikpaşa, Istanbul, as well as a member by birth in the Armenian Apostolic Church. He regarded both churches as part of his culture and said that he was not someone who dealt heavily with religious rituals.

After university Having graduated from the university, Hrant Dink completed his military service in Denizli; not being promoted to sergeant despite his full marks on the examination caused him to weep. Returning to İstanbul, Dink established "Beyaz Adam" (literally "White Man"), a bookstore in the Bakırköy district with his brothers Hosrop and Yervant in 1979. Encouraging students to browse and borrow needed books, the store gained recognition by word of mouth and gradually expanded into a multi-location bookstore and publishing house that specialized in textbooks, children's books, atlases and dictionaries.

Alongside Mıgırdiç Margosyan and Yetvart Tomasyan, Dink founded Aras Publishing in 1993, which remains the only publishing house in Turkey publishing books in Western Armenian. Dink left Aras Publishing three years later to pursue his dream of founding Agos.

The Tuzla Armenian Children's Camp was the subject of an exhibit by the Turkish Human Rights Organization in 1996, the materials from which was published in book form in 2000, with a foreword by Orhan Pamuk and an afterword by Hrant Dink. The first issue appeared on 5 April 1996 and was hailed by Patriarch Karekin II as a զատիկ (Easter) gift. Patriarch Karekin II asked the attendees at the meeting what needed to be done and the opinion that emerged from the meeting was that the Armenians in Turkey needed to communicate with the society at large.

Up to the founding of Agos, the Armenian community had two main newspapers, Marmara and Jamanak, both published only in Armenian. By publishing in Turkish as well as Armenian, Hrant Dink opened up the channels of communication to the society at large for the Armenian community.

At its inception, Agos started with a circulation of 2,000, and at the time of Hrant Dink's death had reached a circulation of around 6,000.

Editorial policy Dink's unique perspective has been described as a "four way mirror", simultaneously empathetic to people of the Armenian diaspora, citizens of Armenia, Turkish Armenians, and citizens of Turkey. In a speech Hrant Dink delivered on 19 May 2006, at a seminar jointly organized in Antalya by the Turkish Journalists' Association and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, he said:

Acting as a voluntary spokesperson for the Armenian community in Turkey, Dink, through Agos, addressed the particular prejudices, injustices and problems the community faced in its interaction with the Turkish society and state.

Dink, however, has been criticized for promoting antisemitic themes of blaming Dönme converts for the genocide.

Armenian issues Dink hoped his questioning would pave the way for peace between the two peoples:

In a February 2006 interview with the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Dink spoke about his 2005 conviction for insulting Turkishness in a criminal court: "This is a political decision because I wrote about the Armenian genocide and they detest that, so they found a way to accuse me of insulting Turks." Having exhausted internal appeal mechanisms, Dink appealed to the European Court of Human Rights for an overturn of the ruling on 15 January. The appeal suggests that Article 301 compromises freedom of expression and that Dink has been discriminated against because of his Armenian ethnicity. Dink's family has the right to decide whether or not to proceed with the appeal after his death.

In September 2006, another case was opened against Dink on charges of insulting Turkishness under Article 301, which Amnesty International considered to be "part of an emerging pattern of harassment against the journalist exercising his right to freedom of expression." The charge was brought against him by the Istanbul Prosecutor's Office after he referred to the 1915 massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide during a 14 July 2006 interview with Reuters: "Of course I'm saying it's a genocide, because its consequences show it to be true and label it so. We see that people who had lived on this soil for 4,000 years were exterminated by these events." On 14 June 2007, the case against Hrant Dink was dropped due to his death, though proceedings for Serkis Seropyan and Arat Dink were scheduled for 18 July 2007.

Assassination

Dink was assassinated in Istanbul around 12:00 GMT on 19 January 2007, as he returned to the offices of Agos. The killer was reported to have introduced himself as an Ankara University student who wanted to meet with Dink. When his request was rejected, he waited in front of a nearby bank for a while. According to eyewitnesses, Dink was shot by a man of 25 to 30 years of age, who fired three shots at Dink's head from the back at point blank range before fleeing the scene on foot. According to the police, the assassin was a man of 18 to 19 years of age. Two men had been taken into custody in the first hours of the police investigation, but were later released. Another witness, the owner of a restaurant near the Agos office, said the assassin looked about 20, wore jeans and a cap and shouted "I shot the infidel" as he left the scene. Hrant Dink's wife and daughter collapsed when they heard the news, and were taken to the hospital.

Funeral Dink's funeral service was held on 23 January 2007 in the Surp Asdvadzadzin Patriarchal Church in the Kumkapı neighborhood of Istanbul. Dink's funeral ceremony developed into a demonstration at which over 100,000 marched chanting "We are all Armenians". Along the way thousands of people leaned out of their office windows and threw flowers.

Trial The Dink murder trial opened in Istanbul on 2 July 2007. Eighteen people were charged at Istanbul Heavy Penal Court No 14 in connection with the journalist's assassination. Since the main suspect, Ogün Samast was younger than 18, the hearing was not public. Reportedly, the defendants Yasin Hayal and Erhan Tuncel repeated their testimonies given to the security forces and prosecutor. The court decided to release the defendants Osman Altay, Irfan Özkan, Salih Hacisalihoglu and Veysel Toprak to be tried without remand and adjourned the hearing to 1 October.

On 25 July 2011, Samast was convicted of premeditated murder and illegal possession of a firearm by Istanbul's Heavy Juvenile Criminal Court. He was sentenced to 22 years and 10 months in prison, and could be eligible for parole in 2021, after serving two thirds of his sentence. Another suspect, Yasin Hayal, was convicted of ordering the murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

In July 2014, the Turkish Supreme Court ruled that the investigation into the killing had been flawed, thus paving the way for trials of police officials and other public authorities. In the pursuit of this case hearings were held, and in January 2017 Ali Fuat Yılmazer, the former head of Turkey's police intelligence branch, gave testimony that the killing was "deliberately not prevented" and security authorities in Istanbul and Trabzon were responsible.

The trials, based on two indictments dated 2015 and 2017 charging a total of 78 defendants, lingered on for several years. The 14th Heavy Penal Court in Istanbul finally issued its verdict during the 130th hearing on 26 March 2021. Former police chiefs Yılmazer and Ramazan Akyürek were issued life sentences for premeditated murder. 26 defendants were sentenced to jail for various periods, while others were either acquitted or their judicial cases were separated from the murder trial. An appeals court upheld most of the rulings on 5 May 2022, as 11 defendants were still in prison as part of the judicial process.

The family of Dink released a statement on 26 March 2021, announcing that the verdicts "could be able to convince neither themselves nor the public," while their lawyer stressed that several public officials who took part in the murder were not even put on trial.

After serving 16 years and 10 months of his prison sentence of 22 years and 10 months, Samast was released on parole "for good behaviour" on 15 November 2023. The next week, on December 13, Samast applied for a name change, saying "At a young age, I got involved in a grave incident. As a result, I face difficulties within society. I cannot find peace; I want to be forgotten". His proposed name was widely circulated in the Turkish press.

Dink v. Turkey

In 2011 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Turkey had failed to protect Hrant Dink's life and freedom of expression. He had received death threats from ultranationalists after writing articles concerning Turkish-Armenian identity, the Armenian origins of one of Atatürk's adopted daughters and the role of Turkey in the genocide of Armenians during World War I.

Awards

2005 Ayşenur Zarakolu Award for Freedom of Thought and Expression, awarded by the Turkish Human Rights Association in Turkey 2006 Henri Nannen Prize for Freedom of the Press by Gruner + Jahr, publisher of Stern in Germany 2006 Oxfam/Novib PEN Award for Freedom of Expression by Oxfam Novib in Netherlands 2006 Bjørnson Prize by The Norwegian Academy of Literature and Freedom of Expression in Norway 2007 Armenian Presidential State Prize, citing Dink's contribution to "restoration of historical justice, mutual understanding between peoples, freedom of speech, and protection of human rights." 2007 (posthumous) Hermann Kesten Medal for outstanding efforts in support of persecuted writers 2007 International Press Institute World Press Freedom Hero

Taner Akçam's 2012 book The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity is dedicated to Dink and to Vahakn Dadrian.

The Hrant Dink Foundation now hosts an annual Hrant Dink Award ceremony to recognize other human rights activists.

Legacy

According to Vicken Cheterian,