Assassination Of Hrant Dink

[Yervant1]

http://english.sabah.com.tr/DBF29826D28B44...A576E5A7B3.html

http://english.sabah.com.tr/12018D45D06145...497C2D2EA0.html

[Error 404]

This proves how much these fanatics hate Armenians. Some papers are reporting that the killer shouted "I killed the non-Muslim" others are saying that he shouted "I killed the Armenian".

I bet he shouted "I killed the gavur (infidel)" but this is used mainly for Armenians and the papers are using instead a politically correct words.

Also his assasination would make a bigger impact than killing a Turkish person.

 

100% agree with you. I just want to add the words of Sun Tzu anscient chinese army general: "kill one scare ten thousands". There is no need for series of killings.

[DominO]

This proves how much these fanatics hate Armenians. Some papers are reporting that the killer shouted "I killed the non-Muslim" others are saying that he shouted "I killed the Armenian".

I bet he shouted "I killed the gavur (infidel)" but this is used mainly for Armenians and the papers are using instead a politically correct words.

Also his assasination would make a bigger impact than killing a Turkish person.

 

It could very well be that he was used as a mean by those groups yalpa was talking about in the past opposing the entry of Turkey in the EU. Maybe, it would be a possibility, but if this is the cases, they will still try even harder and start shouting others, not just one person.

[Yervant1]

It could very well be that he was used as a mean by those groups yalpa was talking about in the past opposing the entry of Turkey in the EU. Maybe, it would be a possibility, but if this is the cases, they will still try even harder and start shouting others, not just one person.

I think Dink was targeted more for the AG bill in congress. It is probably for EU as well but the ergency is for AG in order to deviate the attention of congress and give them excuse to delay and even convince them that this is very volotile issue and shouldn't be discussed let alone voting on it.

[DominO]

I think Dink was targeted more for the AG bill in congress. It is probably for EU as well but the ergency is for AG in order to deviate the attention of congress and give them excuse to delay and even convince them that this is very volotile issue and shouldn't be discussed let alone voting on it.

 

Hmmm..., you are overevaluating Erdogans administration general intelligence me think.

[Yervant1]

Hmmm..., you are overevaluating Erdogans administration general intelligence me think.

It has nothing to do with erdogan but for some lobbies in the US to use this as an excuse to change some minds.

[DominO]

It has nothing to do with erdogan but for some lobbies in the US to use this as an excuse to change some minds.

 

I was never good at speculating on such things and I think it is too soon.

[Yervant1]

I was never good at speculating on such things and I think it is too soon.

I always say time will tell, hindsight is 20/20.

Edited January 20, 2007 by Yervant1

[Aubépine]

Unbelievable. I just learned now. I never thought they would go this far.

[gmd]

Unbelievable. I just learned now. I never thought they would go this far.

 

there is a historic precedent...

[gmd]

What I don't get here is that people like Zarakollu or Bertkay are still alive after giving lectures, Akçan even gave a lecture in Turkey. None of those people were shut, would a Turk not be much more angered against a Turk who would talk about the genocide? If this is that organised, would there be not a series of such assassinations?

 

maybe a certain element of extremist intended this to be a very clear warning to all Armenians, everywhere. if they are so bold as to assasinate yet another Armenian in 'Polis then what stops them from doing more elsewhere?

[Armat]

If they think (Turks) killing an outspoken Armenian will stop AG drive they are wrong.This will makes us even more then ever to press forward!

Turkeu EU hopes are in shables.

I think Hrant would of like to see US AG recognition finally come true.RIP our friend

[DominO]

If they think (Turks) killing an outspoken Armenian will stop AG drive they are wrong.This will makes us even more then ever to press forward!

Turkeu EU hopes are in shables.

I think Hrant would of like to see US AG recognition finally come true.RIP our friend

 

Yervant might be right, this could be used by those opposing claiming that the tensions are high and that it would not be a good idea to make things worst.

[Z'areh]

maybe a certain element of extremist intended this to be a very clear warning to all Armenians, everywhere. if they are so bold as to assasinate yet another Armenian in 'Polis then what stops them from doing more elsewhere?

 

Some thoughts

 

--at this point speculations are plentiful, no one knows yet who is behind this attack, and that's the only fact so far.

 

--Fisk is being his regular feisty Fisk when he is including (although inconceivably) that a nationalist Armenian could do such a thing, he himself doesn't believe that, but it's not the first time Fisk is trying to be controversial, reading the article leaves no room for doubt what he really thinks about the Armenian genocide and Turkey's denial.

 

--I also, for the moment, think that this could be the work of a deranged individual, with no small amount of ideological/psychological encouragement from the Turkish State, be that in the form of official vehement denials, lies propagated throughout the decades, and general Turkish intellectual bankruptcy when it comes to mainstream the issue of the Armenians. e.g. who criticized president Sezer for not congratulating Pamuk for his Nobel Prize, for reportedly saying that Pamuk doesn’t deserve congratulations because he champions the Armenian cause?

 

--The most dangerous aspect of this denial, which can easily create a fertile ground for hatred against Armenians is based on the fear of eventual financial/territorial damages primarily, this denial is not based on an honest feeling of Turkey being a victim of historical mistreated, which is often cited by officials and media. Today in Turkey you can say that Armenians were massacred, deported without food and shelter, humiliated and deprived of their dignity, eliminated from Anatolia, and no one will take you to court, but blurt out the word Genocide and you're in trouble. That is why Turkish journalists have to add the prefix "so-called" in their articles about the genocide out of fear of being accused of admitting it.

 

--Finally, whether Dink's assassin was just an individual or, as Dink himself feared, the "deep Sate", referring to ultra nationalist elements in the government, it points to a general panic in the Turkish psyche that Armenians are unstoppable in their march to establish the reality of the genocide, made worse by all that talk of imminent passage of a genocide resolution in the US Congress. In this regard this assassination could as well have been planned high up in the government to warn the Americans of consequences worst than imagined. Who knows? Since rash actions often overtakes panicky nationalist's head, actions overtly anti-Turkish may find justifications, however stupid they are.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[phantom22]

Just so horrible. Kemal Kerincsiz might have just as well pulled the trigger. Article 301 was Hrant's death sentence. The Turkish legislature had better abolish that law ASAP.

[MosJan]

http://english.sabah.com.tr/DBF29826D28B44...A576E5A7B3.html

http://english.sabah.com.tr/12018D45D06145...497C2D2EA0.html

 

 

did you see the name of the article ??

 

Here is the traitor

 

The journalist Hrant Dink was shot dead after the armed attack. The assassinator aged approximately 18-19 ran away.

 

The voice of Turkish Armenians with common sense and the man who made the harshest remarks during the Armenian Genocide talks at the French parliament, Hrant Dink, was shot dead in front of the newspaper building at Halaskargazi street Şişli. At the armed attack, the assassinator approach from behind and shot three times at around 15.00. Dink died at the incident location. According to the eye witnesses, the assassinator was about 18-19 years old wearing jeans and a white beret. He entered the Şafak street and disappeared. In order not to get followed, he directed the gun to the eye witnesses and ran away shouting "I killed the Armenian." At the investigation conducted by the incident location investigation teams and also the fight against terrorism teams, it was detected that Dink had two bullets on the head and one bullet on the neck.

 

http://english.sabah.com.tr/F213E849632444...AD73D4B98D.html

[MosJan]

Demirel: provocation

 

"I was with Demirel. He set his eyes on the subtitle on the television screen: "Hrant Dink was murdered." His first reaction: "very bad. Very great provocation. There will be insults that we do not deserve."

 

yildiz

 

A gun shot while Demirel was talking about Mrs. Nazmiye

 

We were talking with Süleyman Demirel on Nazmiye Demirel, his wife. As soon as he told thank God she is fine, he set his eyes on television with the subtitle "Hrant Dink was murdered." His first reaction: "very bad. Very great provocation. It is very bad in an environment where Armenian claims are displayed in European Parliaments. The world does not search for truth. It is not occupied with the truth. What is behind that? A vulgar murder. Turkey is wanted to be encumbered with new issues. We are faced with the insults that we do not deserve. Everyone is going to speak whether he knows or not. We should be calm and patient."

[MosJan]

i'm gonna call the day offff / will not be surprised if in the morning we find some articles that it was an Armenian or a Qurd who sut Hrant - after all turks are good on making / rewriting stuff up

[Takoush]

i'm gonna call the day offff / will not be surprised if in the morning we find some articles that it was an Armenian or a Qurd who sut Hrant - after all turks are good on making / rewriting stuff up

Absolutely. I was thinking the same thing. As the Turkish government have tried to rewrite history for 92 years now along with their notorius denials of their denials of the Arm. Genocide; I too will not be surprised if in the morning or the following morning they will come up with something as ridiculous as an Armenian or a Turk killed Dink. They will lie again.

 

I'll say it again, am pretty sure Dink's murder was a plot by the Turkish government. They are well known for such matters. As it was done in the past they would bring down an Armenian man to be killed in their country even when the man is in a ship docked in Turkey but the ship belonging to a different country.

We all know that whichever the country the ship belongs to that that cannot be done by international law as it is illegal. But it takes a Turkish millet backward murderous government to still commit such crimes; and they would do it time and again.

 

Perhaps they killed Dink to divert and delay the AG acceptance matter by the U.S. Anything is possible in their devious and denialist/murderous mind and actions.

 

But we will have the acceptance of the Armenian Genocide by the US this year and as Papyan suggested we will see to it that we get our Wilsonian Armenia back to us!!!!!!!!!

Edited January 20, 2007 by Anahid Takouhi

[15levels]

BBC article on the assasination (of course) put the word genocide in quotes. Furthermore, they dont hesitate to explain why....

-------------------------------------

Why put "genocide" in inverted commas?

 

Whether or not the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians during World War I amounted to genocide is a matter for heated debate. Some countries have declared that a genocide took place, but others have resisted calls to do so.

-----------------------------------

Disgusting....

[karakash]

New York Times - Saturday, January 20, 2007 --

 

Armenian Editor Is Slain in Turkey

 

 

By SEBNEM ARSU

 

Published: January 20, 2007

 

ISTANBUL, Jan. 19 —A prominent newspaper editor, columnist and voice for Turkey’s ethnic Armenians who was prosecuted for challenging the official Turkish version of the 1915 Armenian genocide, was shot dead as he left his office on a busy street in central Istanbul on Friday.

 

Colleagues of Hrant Dink, the editor of a weekly newspaper in Istanbul, looked down from the paper’s offices to where his body lay.

 

Protesters rallied in Istanbul, some holding up signs of Hrant Dink, a newspaper editor and ethnic Armenian who was shot dead outside his office earlier in the day. Officials said they detained three suspects.

Television images showed the editor, Hrant Dink, lying on the crowded sidewalk covered with a white sheet outside the office of his bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly, Agos. Officials said they detained three suspects. Investigators were monitoring surveillance tapes from nearby shops.

 

Mr. Dink, 53, a Turk of Armenian descent, often provoked widespread anger in Turkey for his comments on the genocide — which Turkey denies, saying the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians resulted from hunger and other suffering in World War I. He also angered some ethnic Armenians for opposing their demand that Turkey recognize the genocide as a condition of entry to the European Union. He viewed entry into the Union as the clearest route to strengthening democracy in Turkey.

 

In recent articles, Mr. Dink (pronounced deenk) described increasing death threats against him. “I do not know how real these threats are,” he wrote, “but what’s really unbearable is the psychological torture that I’m living in, like a pigeon, turning my head up and down, left and right, my head quickly rotating.”

 

Reaction to the daylight shooting, both here and abroad, was swift and deep. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the shooting as a direct attack on Turkey’s peace and stability. “A bullet was fired at freedom of thought and democratic life in Turkey,” he said in a nationally broadcast news conference. “Once again, dark hands have chosen our country and spilled blood in Istanbul to achieve their dark goals.”

 

In an unusual show of anger and regret, the prime minister’s remarks were echoed by the head of the armed forces, the president and other officials. The Armenian patriarch in Istanbul, Archbishop Mesrob Mutafyan, declared 15 days of mourning for the small Armenian, Christian population of Turkey.

 

Several thousand people marched from Mr. Dink’s office to Taksim Square on Friday evening to protest the killing. People held pictures of Mr. Dink, decorated his office door with flowers, waved black flags and chanted, “Shoulder to shoulder against fascism,” and, “We are all Hrant; we are all Armenians.”

 

European officials and human rights groups also expressed horror and called on Turkey to do more to protect free expression.

 

Mr. Dink was one of a number of intellectuals convicted under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which penalizes remarks against the state or the Turkish identity. It been harshly criticized by the European Union as a violation of freedom of expression, as Turkey moves toward membership.

 

Turkey has been changing some laws to try to meet the European Union’s membership criteria, but faced a setback last month when ministers in Brussels decided to freeze talks on 8 of 35 areas of discussion because of Turkey’s refusal to open its airports and seaports to Cyprus, a member of the Union.

 

Among the crowd that gathered Friday night, the common fear was that this assassination would be added to the list of unsolved murders. “This is an attack against our democracy,” said Ayhan Aydin, an international financial consultant, who worked on the same street on which Mr. Dink was shot.

 

“We’re here to show that sensible people wish this assassination to be clarified and want the perpetrators to be brought to justice,” Mr. Aydin said, standing in the crowd. “We all fear that this insane attack might be swept under the carpet once it gets too complicated to resolve, like other murders did.”

 

Turkey’s ambition to become a European Union member requires further democratization and a better functioning legal system. The group has been particularly critical of Article 301.

 

Derya Sazak of the Milliyet newspaper said of the law, “This legal system brings forward the culture of hatred and lynching, in which Hrant became an open target. The murderers always go after the moderate voices, which Turkey needs the most.”

 

Mr. Dink, a father of three, founded Agos in 1996. The bilingual community newspaper has a weekly circulation of 5,000.

 

Haluk Sahin, a columnist for the Radikal newspaper, a strong supporter of Mr. Dink’s legal struggles, said Turkey had been hit in the heart.

 

“Those who wanted to harm Turkey couldn’t have chosen a better target,” Mr. Sahin said. “As opposed to other killings in the past, Turkish public reaction against this murder will show us where Turkey stands in the world.”

 

Susanne Fowler contributed reporting from Paris.

 

 

[Nikephoros_Phokas]

Who will inherit his property?

 

If his property is confiscated by the Turkish state, that is about as evil it gets.

[Arpa]

I agree. It is not a work of insane or fanatic. This is political assassination.

The wheels are turning. The process has already begun. The games of “pass the buck”, “pin the tail on the donkey” is in full swing. Of course! We have to cast doubts on the, Allah forbid , Turkish ethnicity of the murderer.

From Sabah .Thanks MosJan;

The murderer is identified as “MP, aged 23 ….” Does MP stand for Mehmet “*****“?

http://english.sabah.com.tr/F213E849632444...AD73D4B98D.html

"The suspect born in Şırnak

The suspect taken into custody is stated to be M.P. aged 23 born in Şırnak. It was learnt that the eye witnesses will be faced with the two suspects for identification. The police started to investigate the computers of Dink. It is investigated if there is any threat messages or e-mails. Five eye witnesses who saw the attack very closely watched the videos recorded by the security cameras."

Sirnak, pronounced Surnekh(?) by the locals, is a town right in the heart of “Kurdistan” a couple of hundred miles south of Van.

Here is the Armenian connection.

Thanks David and Raffi.

http://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?titl..._Western_Europe

The New Armenians of Western Europe

From Armeniapedia.org

Jump to: navigation, search

David Zenian

BRUSSELS — Sirnak and Silope are nothing more than small dots on the map, but Armenians rehabilitated from these Kurdish villages along the Turkish-Iraqi border are changing the fabric of Armenian communities in at least two European cities.

In Brussels and the St. Jerome neighborhood of Marseilles, the so-called Kurdish-Armenians are seen as the “guardians” and “backbone” of the local Armenian Apostolic churches.

Their children fill the Armenian language classrooms, often helping their Kurdish-speaking parents communicate with social workers and community leaders.

“They have introduced major demographic changes into our communities,” says a second-generation Belgian-Armenian. “The new-comers are in the majority now and it is no secret that they have altered the face of the Armenian community here. These people are unique because of where and how they preserved their faith and Armenian heritage.”

But who are the Kurdish-Armenians, where did they come from, how did they settle in Europe and are they integrating into their new homelands.

There are no historical records about their past, but through interviews and informal conversations with their elders, and observing them in their own environments, it is obvious that they are as Kurdish as they can be in their manners, language and customs, but nevertheless, fanatic Armenians when it comes to their Christian faith and roots.

Most of them, and interestingly enough the older generation, can recite the Lord’s Prayer (Hayr Mer) in Armenian along with sections of the Divine Liturgy (Holy Badarak), but that’s as far as their “knowledge” of their ethnic tongue goes.

At home their language of communication is Kurdish, even with their very young children. Apart from church-related gatherings, they socialize only with fellow refugees and the ethnic Kurdish communities of their immediate neighborhoods.

Mesrop Afshar is one of the pillars of the Kurdish-Armenian community of Brussels. “I think I am 57,” says Afshar, who looks more like 67, if not a few years older.

He remembers growing up in fear in a small town in southeastern Turkey where 40 Armenian families had no choice but to keep a very low profile among a predominantly Kurdish population of 7,000.

“I believe we are originally from the city of Van, but I am not sure,” he said through an interpreter, a younger member of the “Sirnak clan” who had the opportunity to study at the boarding schools of the Armenian Patriarchates of Istanbul and Jerusalem.

Afshar also remembers with a deep sense of awe his grandfather’s Bible and tales from his grandmother relating to their roots in the Armenian town of Van only 150 kilometers to the north in Turkey.

“Fear and a sense of pressure were constant companions. The pressures were great, but our elders constantly reminded us that we were Armenians despite the loss of our language,” Afshar said.

“Our elders used to say they survived the first massacre of Armenians at the hands of the Ottomans in the 1890’s by escaping from Van south to Sirnak where 40 families settled,” he said.

Up until 1908, there was an Armenian school and church in Sirnak.

Sirnak’s Armenians had relatively few problems until the 1915 Genocide when most of the local population and Armenians living in a number of other villages in the area were wiped out. Some were forced to convert to Islam while others escaped across the border to Iraq.

Those who made it to Iraq settled in the Kurdish town of Zakhu, where 70 Armenian families reportedly still live. While no Armenian is being taught, the Armenian school and St. Mary’s Church are still open.

Zakhu and Sirnak are only 50 kilometers apart, but in a sea of Kurdish population and with the long-standing feud between Turkey and Iraq, communication between the two Armenian minorities has been minimal.

“We were kept apart because of a multitude of complex demographic and geo-political reasons. We lived in a cocoon,” a Sirnak elder said.

Those who survived the 1915 Genocide and somehow remained in Sirnak under the tutelage of local Kurdish chieftains did not know if there were any other Armenians left on the face of the earth.

They were alone, isolated, and surrounded by Kurds in the region of southeastern Turkey which the Kurds call “Kurdistan”.

They lost their language, took on Kurdish surnames to “camouflage” their identity and for more than 50 years struggled against total assimilation into the Kurdish landscape.

“I was born in Sirnak and the only Armenians I knew were those in and around our small town. We did not know if other Armenians had survived the massacres,” Afshar said during a recent interview conducted partly in fragmented Turkish or through interpreters — other Kurdish-speaking Armenian immigrants who had learned Armenian since leaving Sirnak nearly 15 years ago.

“We could not go around trumpeting our heritage. You might find it difficult to understand, but for all practical purposes, we lived quietly as Kurds of Armenian descent by adhering to our Armenian Christian faith. It was this faith that kept us together as Armenians at a time when we had lost everything else. We were cut off from other Armenians. Our language was gone, so was our literature and history, but our faith was intact.”

An Assyrian Orthodox priest came to Sirnak from nearby villages under the cloak of darkness to baptize the newborn, sneaking out before daybreak to avoid attracting the attention of the town’s Kurdish population.

Weddings and funerals were done in the same way.

“Among ourselves, we were Armenians. As our children were baptized, we gave them Armenian names like Sarkis, Tavit, Noubar, Kevork and Saro but out on the streets we were like the rest of the town’s population. We had Kurdish surnames like Euz, Yalik, Odemish, Yajir, Birgin,” Afshar said.

One fateful day in 1965, however, the isolation of the small Armenian population of Sirnak was broken. As if by fate — or sheer accident — an Italian missionary working with the region’s Assyrian Christian minority was informed of “these other Christians” in Sirnak.

“This papaz (priest) came and talked to us and later went to Istanbul and briefed the late Patriarch Shnork Kaloustian of our existence.

“It was not much later that we saw the first Armenian priest since the Genocide. In time, his visits became more and more frequent. Our teenagers were taken to the Armenian Patriarchates first in Istanbul and then Jerusalem for education and finally, thanks to Patriarch Kaloustian, the entire population of Sirnak and Silope began evacuating in 1980 to Belgium, France and a small group to Holland,” Afshar said with an emotional voice.

By 1986, the entire population of Sirnak and Silope were out ... saved from imminent annihilation as Armenians.

Today, this peculiar “branch” of the greater Armenian family numbers several thousand citizens clustered around Armenian churches in their adopted homelands.

Testimony by first generation Armenians in Brussels and Marseilles is overwhelming. “Their faith in the Armenian church is very strong. For them, the church is not folklore or tradition. It is treated as a national treasure and that’s why the presence of these Kurdish Armenians has given a new lease to our religious life,” says one Marseilles resident.

This article is Copyright © 2005 by the Armenian General Benevolent Union (ABGU), all rights reserved. Used with special permission, granted to Armeniapedia.org. The AGBU Magazine can be found on the AGBU Website..

 

Retrieved from "http://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=The_New_Armenians_of_Western_Europe"

 

 

 

[zurderer]

Who will inherit his property?

 

If his property is confiscated by the Turkish state, that is about as evil it gets.

 

Pls. He have children and wife. why should Turkey get his property?

 

 

Arpa, a camera captured his face. So they cannot find innocent murderers.

Edited January 20, 2007 by zurderer

[Takoush]

Absolutely. I was thinking the same thing. As the Turkish government have tried to rewrite history for 92 years now along with their notorius denials of their denials of the Arm. Genocide; I too will not be surprised if in the morning or the following morning they will come up with something as ridiculous as an Armenian or a Turk killed Dink. They will lie again.

It's a typo error I meant to say Kurd not Turk. I'll rephrase my paragaph.

 

I will not be surprised if in the morning or the following morning they will come up with something as ridiculous as an Armenian or a Kurd killed Dink. They will lie again.