Journalist's killing a test for Turkey
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
The Gazette
Turkish authorities moved quickly when Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was murdered last week. Within a couple of days, police arrested a teenager who has reportedly confessed, and now investigators are trying to learn if "ultra-nationalist" groups were involved.
That's good news. Unfettered police work and full disclosure are the marks of a state ruled by law. It is also encouraging that thousands of Turks joined a spontaneous public march of mourning to the offices of Dink's newspaper Agos. "We are all Hrant Dink," the marchers chanted. "Hrant Dink's murderer is this country's betrayer."
Dink upset his 17-year-old killer by using the word "genocide," and defending others who did so, about the killing of as many as 1.5 million Armenians about 90 years ago during the last days of the Ottoman empire . "Genocide" is now widely accepted around the world - including by this newspaper - as the mot juste. But many in Turkey still deny any attempt at genocide. And the Turkish state, moving well beyond healthy historical skepticism, has made it a crime to "insult Turkishness" by speaking of this genocide.
Hesitating in the doorway to the modern world, Turkey is wrestling with itself about many aspects of its identity, not least acceptance of its own history.
Just this weekend, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who faces elections this year, was accused publicly, by a senior member of his own party, of using too-harsh nationalist rhetoric. By yesterday, Erdogan was saying "the kind of people who did this ... can definitely not call themselves nationalists."
Municipal officials have invited representatives of the Armenian diaspora to come to Dink's funeral, and have warned the government that the world will be watching the funeral for signs of official interest.
And not just the funeral. Especially if this killing proves to have been plotted, the global wave of revulsion against it will, we hope, send a signal to those who govern the country: If Turkey doesn't move forward - starting with genuine free speech and honest acknowledgement of the past - it's doomed to slide back into a more backward and impoverished way of life.
That's the price of "ultra-nationalism."
© The Gazette ( Montreal ) 2007
The Gazette
Turkish authorities moved quickly when Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was murdered last week. Within a couple of days, police arrested a teenager who has reportedly confessed, and now investigators are trying to learn if "ultra-nationalist" groups were involved.
That's good news. Unfettered police work and full disclosure are the marks of a state ruled by law. It is also encouraging that thousands of Turks joined a spontaneous public march of mourning to the offices of Dink's newspaper Agos. "We are all Hrant Dink," the marchers chanted. "Hrant Dink's murderer is this country's betrayer."
Dink upset his 17-year-old killer by using the word "genocide," and defending others who did so, about the killing of as many as 1.5 million Armenians about 90 years ago during the last days of the Ottoman empire . "Genocide" is now widely accepted around the world - including by this newspaper - as the mot juste. But many in Turkey still deny any attempt at genocide. And the Turkish state, moving well beyond healthy historical skepticism, has made it a crime to "insult Turkishness" by speaking of this genocide.
Hesitating in the doorway to the modern world, Turkey is wrestling with itself about many aspects of its identity, not least acceptance of its own history.
Just this weekend, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who faces elections this year, was accused publicly, by a senior member of his own party, of using too-harsh nationalist rhetoric. By yesterday, Erdogan was saying "the kind of people who did this ... can definitely not call themselves nationalists."
Municipal officials have invited representatives of the Armenian diaspora to come to Dink's funeral, and have warned the government that the world will be watching the funeral for signs of official interest.
And not just the funeral. Especially if this killing proves to have been plotted, the global wave of revulsion against it will, we hope, send a signal to those who govern the country: If Turkey doesn't move forward - starting with genuine free speech and honest acknowledgement of the past - it's doomed to slide back into a more backward and impoverished way of life.
That's the price of "ultra-nationalism."
© The Gazette ( Montreal ) 2007
Labels: Hrant Dink, Turkey and EU
posted by Vahe Balabanian at 9:21 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home