for those interested to know more about Hrant Dink
Chiara H. Megighian Zenati
104 Hawthorne RD.
Pittsburgh, PA 15238
http://www.eutcc.org/articles/1/17/document338.ehtml HRANT DINK: Requiem to a ;
Lesser Turkey Dogu Ergil
It is a true pity that we have lost a lightening rod against fanaticism of all
kinds and a true patriot who believed and preached that without love of the
citizen; love of the country is a guise for discrimination and ideological
tyranny.
Who was Hrant Dink? He was one of those rare Armenians (now numbering around
60.000) whose family survived the Ottoman mass deportation of 1915. Although he
was born in Malatya in 1954, he grew up in an Armenian orphanage in Istanbul,
graduated from the Zoology Department of the Faculty of Sciences, Istanbul
University. However, he found his way into public recognition after he has
founded the Turkish-Armenian daily, AGOS in 1996. As the chief editor and prime
columnist he aimed at three things: 1) to open up the introverted Armenian
community to the wider public for he believed that direct contact and open
channels of knowledge would help eradicate prejudices; 2) to promote the idea
that there are other ethnic-cultural groups in Turkey other than the Turks and
Muslims and they can very well blend into the nation cleansed of stereotypes
and biases; 3) to defend Armenians against majority fanaticism in Turkey and to
defend Turks/Turkey against fanaticism and hypocrisy of foreigners and Diaspora
Armenians. He has succeeded in all three accounts. He was a Turk against
Armenian extremism and he was an Armenian against Turkish extremism. He was
Turkey in its complexity. But fanatics do not live on reason. They live and
nourish on hatred. They need to hate in order to survive. It is this hatred of
life and humanity that took the life of this honorable democrat and patriot.
Hrant, did not leave his country despite all pressures and injustices. He
preferred to talk from within, among people who he identified with. Yet he was
given a prison sentence of 6 months due to the notorious Article 301 of the
Turkish Penal Code that punishes “insulting Turkishness”. All the other writers
and intellectuals indicted in lieu of this article was acquitted. However his
case was carried to the High Court of Appeals where his sentence was endorsed
in spite of the pleas of the Chief Prosecutor who insisted that there was no
crime committed.
There was yet another court case lingering on dating back to 2002 when he gave
a lecture in Urfa and had said, “ I am not a Turk but an Armenian of Turkey”.
He was accused f insulting and denigrating Turkishness!
His answer to such accusations was as follows: “In my opinion to denigrate the
people one lives together on ethnic or religious grounds is pure racism, and
there is no excuse for that…If I am not cleared of these indictments I will
leave my country because anyone condemned for such a crime does not deserve the
right to live with the people he derides”. How noble isn’t it? But believe or
not this statement led to another court case on the grounds of “trying to
influence an ongoing trial”.
Despite his moderate stance, officials and ultra-nationalist were barely
tolerating him although they tried to intimidate him frequently. However, he
was so sincere in his humanitarian quest and his self-acquired mission of
digging out the truth that had been buried deep in the public sub-conscience
concerning the social history of his country, he carried on. While he wanted to
create awareness among Turks about the feelings and suffering of Armenians
following WW1, he tried to convince Diaspora Armenians to reframe the same
events with concepts other than ‘genocide’. He wanted to this to humanize the
issue and snatch it away from the ideological extremism and hateful political
opportunism of the extremists on both sides. He was like a two-way lightening
rod, over-charged by both sides.
The straw that broke the back of the camel was an editorial published in AGOS
on the 6th of February 2004. According to the editorial, the famed adopted (or
God) daughter of M.K. Ataturk, the founder and hero of Turkey, Ms. Sabiha
Gokcen was originally an Armenian. Indeed Hrant had found and interviewed the
relatives of late Ms. Gokcen now living in Armenia. According to the
information obtained she was taken from an Armenian orphanage and raised by
Ataturk to be an accomplished military bomber pilot. She was a national icon
and symbol of modern Turkish women besides being the daughter of Ataturk.
The news shook Turkey. The most potent protest among others came from the
military. The press release that originated from the office of the Chief of
General Staff was as follows: “What ever the reason of opening up such a symbol
to public debate is a crime against national unity and social peace.” Awkward,
but Hrant thought that the revelation would serve the opposite end: it would
bring the Turks and the Armenians together a little closer. After all one of
Turkey’s national icons was originally an Armenian and has been honored to be
the Goddaughter of the nation’s revered hero. So these historical, cultural
differences really do not matter if we can find the commonalities that unite
us. Well, he was wrong. Icons and heroes could only be Turkish in Turkey.
I will conclude this humble requiem in words by the statement of the History
Foundation after Hrant’s assassination: “It is not the lifeless body of Hrant
Dink that lies before AGOS, it is Turkey’s hopes…Turkey will find it harder to
solve its problems without Hrant Dink; it will be a lesser Turkey. = Check
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