Hrant Dink
But the murder is attributed here to “nationalist anger.” “Turkish-Armenian editor shot dead in Istanbul,” by Paul de Bendern and Thomas Grove for Reuters, with thanks to all who sent this in:
ISTANBUL (Reuters) – A high-profile Turkish-Armenian editor, convicted of insulting Turkey’s identity, was shot dead outside his newspaper office in Istanbul on Friday.
Hrant Dink, a frequent target of nationalist anger for his comments on the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War One, was shot as he left his weekly Agos around 1300 GMT in central Istanbul….
Muharrem Gozutok, a restaurant owner near the newspaper, said the assailant looked about 20, wore jeans and a cap and shouted “I shot the non-Muslim” as he left the scene.
Protesters outside the Agos office on one of Istanbul’s busiest streets chanted “the murderer government will pay” and “shoulder-to-shoulder against fascism.”…
“This bullet was fired against Turkey … an image has been created about Turkey that its Armenian citizens have no safety,” said CNN Turk editor Taha Akyol.
Last year Turkey’s appeals court upheld a six-month suspended jail sentence against Dink for referring in an article to an Armenian nationalist idea of ethnic purity without Turkish blood.
The court said the comments went against article 301 of Turkey’s revised penal code, which lets prosecutors pursue cases against writers and scholars for “insulting Turkish identity.”
The ruling was sharply criticised by the EU.
INSULTING TURKISHNESS
Dink was one of dozens of writers who have been charged for insulting Turkishness, particularly over the alleged genocide of Armenians by Turks during World War One.
Turkey denies allegations that 1.5 million Armenians were killed in a systematic genocide. It says both Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks were killed in a partisan conflict that raged on Ottoman territory.
Sure. Some Nazis were killed during World War II also.