Turkish-Armenian writer shot dead

Please keep a moment of silence for this senseless murder of a famous Armenian in Turkey because of expressing his views.

Friday, 19 January 2007
BBC news

The Turkish-Armenian writer and journalist Hrant Dink has been shot dead, Turkish media report.

Dink, the high-profile editor of newspaper Agos, was shot three times outside its offices in Istanbul, the paper said.

Dink was one of the writers who had been prosecuted under Turkey's strict laws against "insulting Turkishness".

He was given a six-month suspended sentence in October 2005 after writing about the Armenian "genocide" of 1915.

Turkey's NTV television said police were searching for a teenager wearing a white hat and a denim jacket in connection with the murder.

The channel showed pictures of a white sheet covering the journalist's body in front of the newspaper building's entrance.

Dink, 53, had received threats from nationalists who viewed him as a traitor, the Associated Press news agency reported.

He was a public figure in Turkey - one of its most prominent Armenian voices.

He once gave an interview with the Associated Press in which he cried while describing the hatred some Turks had for him, saying he could not stay in a country where he was unwanted.

Hundreds of thousands of Armenians died in 1915, in what many Armenians say was a systematic massacre at the hands of the Ottoman Turks.

Turkey denies any genocide, saying the deaths were a part of World War I.

Turkey and neighbouring Armenia still have no official relations.




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