YEREVAN, JANUARY 19, ARMENPRESS. Can Dündar, former Editor-in-chief of the Turkish opposition newspaper Cumhurriyet, who was forced to leave Turkey under pressure and is currently residing in Germany, issued a letter on the 10th anniversary marking the death of Hrant Dink.

ARMENPRESS presents the letter as published in Agos.

“For already a month I’ve been preparing for the memorial event on January 19 in Berlin’s Gorki Theater.  I am re-reading your writings, your life story, books about you. I am listening to your speeches. I am recalling memories.

Reading about the history of resistance in today’s atmosphere of fear gives courage.

I remember with admiration, how all by yourself you told the state, Diaspora, Church – “you are wrong”, becoming both a target and a one-of-a kind voice of conscience.

My readings once again show how right you were, writing, speaking, defending sometimes all by yourself, how anxious, but at the same time how decisive and courageous you were.

Now, I very well understand your skittishness of a dove and contrary to that your decisiveness of lonely whirling.

But when you were writing that people don’t touch doves in this country, did you really believe in that? Or was it simply a desire?

Could you dream about tens of thousands of people following you and chanting – “we are all Armenians”. Could you think that you would create the empathy which you dreamed of by your death?

Today, by reading I even more realize what we have lost with you”.

Hrant Dink, editor-in-chief of Istanbul’s Armenian Agos newspaper, was shot dead on January 19, 2007 outside his office.

In one instance, Dink compared himself to a dove, saying "equally obsessed by what goes on my left and right, front and back. My head is just as mobile and fast".