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American Spectator -
Jan 22 2007
Turkish Blood
By Christopher Orlet
Published 1/22/2007 12:07:02 AM
In his last newspaper column, Hrant Dink wrote that he was now
considered an enemy of the state and of the Turkish people. He had
but recently completed a six-month suspended sentence for the charge
of "insulting Turkish identity," and he now faced two additional
charges. More ominously his email's inbox, he said, was crammed with
death threats.
"My computer's memory is loaded with sentences full of hatred and
threats," Dink noted in his last column for Agos, the Armenian language
weekly of which he was editor-in-chief. "I do not know how real these
threats are, but what's really unbearable is the psychological torture
that I'm living in....For me, 2007 is likely to be a hard year. The
trials will continue, new ones will be started.
Who knows what other injustices I will be up against." Even so,
the editor believed he would survive the year.
He was wrong. Last Friday at 1 p.m., as Dink was leaving his newspaper
office, Ogun Samast, an unemployed 17-year-old Turk, waited outside
on the busy Istanbul street. He approached Dink and fired four
shots. Three of them hit the editor in the neck and head. The assassin
then shouted, "I shot the non-Muslim!" and fled the scene.
Samast was a native of the Black Sea port town of Trabzon. It was
there that police, acting on a tip from Samast's father, arrested the
gunman as he stepped off a bus. Once in custody he proudly confessed
to the murder.
Police also suspect Samast of last year's murder of an Italian Roman
Catholic priest shot and killed in the courtyard of his church in
Trabzon. It seems likely that Fr. Andrea Santaro, 60, was killed in
connection with the uproar following publication of cartoons of the
prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper, cartoons that many Muslims
found insulting.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, an ardent supporter of article 301 of
the Turkish criminal code that outlaws insulting Turkish institutions
or Turkish national identity, is also a shrewd politician who
seeks EU membership for Turkey. The prime minister thus condemned
Dink's murder. "A bullet has been fired at democracy and freedom of
expression," he said in a news conference. "I condemn the traitorous
hands behind this disgraceful murder." This must have puzzled the
dozens of Turkish writers and intellectuals charged under article
301, like publisher Abdullah Yilmaz who faces jail time for issuing a
Turkish edition of Greek writer Mara Meimaridi's novel The Witches of
Smyrna. The novel describes parts of the Turkish quarter of Izmir as
"dirty." A cynic might say that Mr. Erdogan and his government have
no business talking about freedom of expression.
DINK, AN ETHNIC ARMENIAN, was given a six-month suspended sentence
in October 2005 after writing about the Armenian "genocide" of 1915.
Last fall he was again charged with "insulting Turkish identity"
for using the word "genocide" in an interview with Reuters. After
his conviction at a trial that PEN, the international association of
writers, described as featuring the controversial courtroom procedure
of an "attempted lynching," Dink began to think seriously about
emigrating. When he announced that, if the case against him was not
dropped, he would leave Turkey, Ankara charged him with attempting to
influence the judiciary, a crime punishable by 4 1/2 years in prison.
I suspect that Dink's murder will finally force Ankara to reconsider
article 301. Similar charges against novelist Orhan Pamuk for remarks
he made about the Armenian genocide doubtless contributed to his
winning last year's Nobel Prize for Literature. Indeed, the award was
seen as a slap in the face to Ankara and Turkish nationalists. (The
Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer refused even to congratulate
Pamuk.) Similarly Ankara's demonizing of Hrant Dink no doubt stirred
up the jihadist in Ogun Samast and is at least partially to blame
for the editor's murder.
After Dink's 2005 conviction, Ankara said it had no intention
of lifting article 301. Perhaps now Ankara, fearful of losing out
completely in its EU membership bid, will think twice before it throws
journalists and novelists behind bars for telling the unpleasant
truth about the Armenian genocide. Perhaps then Hrant Dink's death
will not have been in vain.
Christopher Orlet is a frequent contributor and runs the Existential
Journalist.
Jan 22 2007
Turkish Blood
By Christopher Orlet
Published 1/22/2007 12:07:02 AM
In his last newspaper column, Hrant Dink wrote that he was now
considered an enemy of the state and of the Turkish people. He had
but recently completed a six-month suspended sentence for the charge
of "insulting Turkish identity," and he now faced two additional
charges. More ominously his email's inbox, he said, was crammed with
death threats.
"My computer's memory is loaded with sentences full of hatred and
threats," Dink noted in his last column for Agos, the Armenian language
weekly of which he was editor-in-chief. "I do not know how real these
threats are, but what's really unbearable is the psychological torture
that I'm living in....For me, 2007 is likely to be a hard year. The
trials will continue, new ones will be started.
Who knows what other injustices I will be up against." Even so,
the editor believed he would survive the year.
He was wrong. Last Friday at 1 p.m., as Dink was leaving his newspaper
office, Ogun Samast, an unemployed 17-year-old Turk, waited outside
on the busy Istanbul street. He approached Dink and fired four
shots. Three of them hit the editor in the neck and head. The assassin
then shouted, "I shot the non-Muslim!" and fled the scene.
Samast was a native of the Black Sea port town of Trabzon. It was
there that police, acting on a tip from Samast's father, arrested the
gunman as he stepped off a bus. Once in custody he proudly confessed
to the murder.
Police also suspect Samast of last year's murder of an Italian Roman
Catholic priest shot and killed in the courtyard of his church in
Trabzon. It seems likely that Fr. Andrea Santaro, 60, was killed in
connection with the uproar following publication of cartoons of the
prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper, cartoons that many Muslims
found insulting.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, an ardent supporter of article 301 of
the Turkish criminal code that outlaws insulting Turkish institutions
or Turkish national identity, is also a shrewd politician who
seeks EU membership for Turkey. The prime minister thus condemned
Dink's murder. "A bullet has been fired at democracy and freedom of
expression," he said in a news conference. "I condemn the traitorous
hands behind this disgraceful murder." This must have puzzled the
dozens of Turkish writers and intellectuals charged under article
301, like publisher Abdullah Yilmaz who faces jail time for issuing a
Turkish edition of Greek writer Mara Meimaridi's novel The Witches of
Smyrna. The novel describes parts of the Turkish quarter of Izmir as
"dirty." A cynic might say that Mr. Erdogan and his government have
no business talking about freedom of expression.
DINK, AN ETHNIC ARMENIAN, was given a six-month suspended sentence
in October 2005 after writing about the Armenian "genocide" of 1915.
Last fall he was again charged with "insulting Turkish identity"
for using the word "genocide" in an interview with Reuters. After
his conviction at a trial that PEN, the international association of
writers, described as featuring the controversial courtroom procedure
of an "attempted lynching," Dink began to think seriously about
emigrating. When he announced that, if the case against him was not
dropped, he would leave Turkey, Ankara charged him with attempting to
influence the judiciary, a crime punishable by 4 1/2 years in prison.
I suspect that Dink's murder will finally force Ankara to reconsider
article 301. Similar charges against novelist Orhan Pamuk for remarks
he made about the Armenian genocide doubtless contributed to his
winning last year's Nobel Prize for Literature. Indeed, the award was
seen as a slap in the face to Ankara and Turkish nationalists. (The
Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer refused even to congratulate
Pamuk.) Similarly Ankara's demonizing of Hrant Dink no doubt stirred
up the jihadist in Ogun Samast and is at least partially to blame
for the editor's murder.
After Dink's 2005 conviction, Ankara said it had no intention
of lifting article 301. Perhaps now Ankara, fearful of losing out
completely in its EU membership bid, will think twice before it throws
journalists and novelists behind bars for telling the unpleasant
truth about the Armenian genocide. Perhaps then Hrant Dink's death
will not have been in vain.
Christopher Orlet is a frequent contributor and runs the Existential
Journalist.