YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 15, ARMENPRESS: On the 60^th birth anniversary of the later editor-in-chief of Agos Hrant Dink, the international awards ceremony devoted to him will take place today, on September 15. Armenpress reports, citing Agos that the ceremony will take place in the evening at 20:22 local time at the concert hall Jamil Rashid Ray in Istanbul.  

The Armenian version of the awarding ceremony can be followed on the Facebook’s Hrant Dink Foundation and Twitter’s  hrantdinkaward pages.

Hrant Dink, the renowned editor-in-chief of Agos, was assassinated in Istanbul in January 19 2007, by Ogün Samast, a 17-year-old Turkish nationalist. This was shortly after the premiere of the genocide documentary Screamers, in which he is interviewed about Turkish denial of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and the case against him under Article 301. While Samast has since been taken into custody, photographs of the assassin flanked by smiling Turkish police and gendarmerie, posing with the killer side by side in front of the Turkish flag, have since surfaced. The photos created a scandal in Turkey, prompting a spate of investigations and the removal from office of those involved.

At his funeral, two hundred thousand mourners marched in protest of the assassination, chanting "We are all Armenians" and "We are all Hrant Dink". Criticism of Article 301 became increasingly vocal after his death, leading to parliamentary proposals for repeal. The 2007–2008 academic year at the College of Europe was named in his honor.