Journalist gets a fond, emotional memorial

February 26, 2007
Daily Bruin UCLA

Tears flowed from the eyes of both Turkish and Armenian audience members at a crowded commemoration held at UCLA Sunday afternoon to remember the death of journalist Hrant Dink.

Dink, the editor in chief of Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, was murdered in front of his office on Jan. 19 by teenager Ogun Samsast. Samsast’s motives for the murder remain unclear, but according to Hurriyet, a daily Turkish newspaper, Samsast was ordered to kill Dink by militant nationalist Yasin Hayal.

In the last two years of Dink’s life, he received numerous death threats for speaking about the Armenian genocide. The Turkish government denies the deaths constitute genocide because it maintains they resulted from the effects of World War I and not an extermination of the Armenians.

Dink was convicted for denigrating the Turkish government under article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code. The article allows journalists to be prosecuted for any perceived criticism of the Turkish government, according to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

Many speakers at the event shared fond memories of Dink. One speaker was Zeynep Turkyilmaz, a UCLA doctoral student in history and a member of the informal student group Initiative of Turkish Students to Commemorate “Our Hrant.”

Turkyilmaz said she met Dink 11 years ago in Turkey. She said as a Turkish undergraduate student doing a project on Armenian literature, she was met by opposition in the course of her research, but Dink encouraged the Armenian-Turkish relationship and supported the project.

“He was very excited ... and he sent a reporter from Agos to cover (the presentation on Armenian literature). I was in one of the first issues (of the newspaper),” recalled Turkyilmaz.

Turkyilmaz urged the audience to remember the challenges Dink went through in his lifetime and to help Dink’s newspaper Agos endure.

“My last memories of Hrant Dink is at Agos. Agos is his legacy. Its survival is now on our shoulders,” Turkyilmaz said.

Speaker Ayse Gul Altinay, a friend of Dink’s, spoke on her feelings about his death.

“I still find myself waking up (and hoping) it is a terrible dream,” Altinay said.

Altinay, a professor from Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey, last met Dink for dinner, where Dink mentioned the threats he had been receiving but said he was only worried about the threats to his family, she said.

This concern for other people and disregard for himself made him popular, Altinay said.

“It is amazing how many friends Hrant had. He touched many lives,” she said.

Altinay also discussed the effect of article 301 and the prosecution of Dink.

“This decision was used as a mechanism to silence Hrant, and yet we all know Hrant was not silenced,” Altinay said.

David Myers, director of the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies, did not know Dink but said he could relate to and admired the late journalist.

“(Dink) sought to wage the battle for his people and his culture – a battle in the name of dialogue and understanding. It is a struggle that many of us are familiar with,” said Myers.

Myers also applauded Dink for acknowledging the Armenian genocide in 1915.

“I think of him less as a victim and more as a inspiration, a role model, a teacher,” Myers said.

Other speakers included Richard Hovannisian, chairman of modern Armenian history and host of the event, and Ruben Centinyan, a UCLA alumnus who spoke about Dink’s beliefs about the government.

The event also had Armenian music: A duduk, a traditional woodwind instrument, was played.

“Let us cry together, mourn together, so that we can soon laugh together, love together,” Altinay said.


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