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Time in Yerevan: 11:07,   28 March 2024

He didn’t spare his life for the sake of Turkey’s change: 10 years passed since Dink’s murder

He didn’t spare his life for the sake of Turkey’s change: 10 years passed since Dink’s murder

YEREVAN, JANUARY 19, ARMENPRESS. To stay and fight, to live and work towards building a better country where every citizen, regardless of nationality or religious affiliation, will be respected: this was Hrant Dink, a man, who, as many state, changed Turkey.  

Founder and former editor-in-chief of the first Armenian bilingual (Armenian and Turkish) “Agos” newspaper of Istanbul was one of those people who sincerely believed that one day Turkey will change, and for this belief he didn’t even spare his own life.

10 years ago, on January 19, 2007, Dink was killed by a Turkish conspirator outside “Agos” editorial office in Istanbul’s district of Şişli. The persons behind the crime, however, were unable to silence the voice of justice by the murder of the Armenian intellectual.

Dink was one of those few persons who not only during his life, but also after the death managed to break a lot of barriers within the Turkish society. His death forced many people to look at and understand the history of their own country in a new way.

Living in Turkey Dink never alienated himself from that country and was doing everything to see the Turkish state changed. Speaking about him he said: “I am a bearer of two identities and consciousness. The first one – I am a dweller of Turkey, I am a citizen of the Republic of Turkey... and the second one – I am Armenian. Besides the fact that I am a part of the Armenian community of Turkey, I am also morally a part of Armenia and the Armenian Diaspora. In this regard, if some people have only one reason to seek for the normalization of the Armenian-Turkish relations, my reasons are at least two times more”. Dink was confident that “the Armenian-Turkish relations must be taken out of the well with a depth of 1915 meters”.

During the last years of his life, Dink started to receive threats from extremist nationalists, as well as hidden threats from officials for his views and discoveries in Turkey. Many urged him to leave Turkey in order to save his life, however, he never listened to them and angered, stating: “This is my country”.

“My feelings, feelings of my family are not easy at all. There have been moments when I seriously thought about leaving the country. Especially when the threats were directed against my relatives. If we were forced to leave, we would took the road as our grandfathers did in 1915….without knowing where they are going…”, Dink said. When he was asked why he is not coming to his Fatherland, to live in Armenia, he answered he is living in a real Fatherland.

In today’s Turkey Dink became the symbol of human rights protection and freedom. Some people call him Turkey’s Martin Luther King, some even say it is due to Dink that a large part of the Turkish society had a courage to look at the history and reality with different eyes.

Dink lived by breaking barriers and died by believing that one day will come when a citizen living in Turkey will wake up in a country where he/she will not have to be ashamed for his/her own past. What he didn’t manage to do during his lifetime, he did it after the death, by awakening the conscience of thousands of Turkey’s citizens, forcing them to stand up, go to the streets and shout: “We all are Hrant, we all are Armenians”.

Araks Kasyan








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