By Amberin Zaman in Istanbul
Last Updated: 7:21pm GMT 19/01/2007
A prominent Turkish journalist who campaigned for Armenian rights was shot outside his office in central Istanbul by suspected Turkish nationalists today, only days after saying he had received anonymous death threats.
Hrant Dink provoked anger in Turkey for describing the killing of Armenians in 1915 as genocide
The murder of Hrant Dink, who was of Armenian descent, is set to deal a further blow to Turkey’s efforts to join the EU.
Mr Dink, 53, was shot in the head and neck three times by an unidentified gunman as he was leaving the bilingual Turkish Armenian newspaper, Agos, that he edited at around 3pm local time.
Eyewitnesses said the assailant was a teenager wearing a white cap and jeans. “He shouted ‘I shot the infidel’ as he ran away,” said Muharrem Gozutok, a restaurant owner.
Police detained two people in connection with the murder but they were released after interrogation.
The Turkish private news channel NTV showed images of Mr Dink’s corpse covered with a white sheet, his feet shod in brown leather shoes sticking out at one end, his crop of unruly black hair at the other.
Hundreds of Turkish citizens gathered outside Agos chanting “We are all Armenians, we are all Hrant Dink.”
Mr Dink, a Turkish citizen of Armenian descent, faced a number of court cases as well as death threats relating to his comments about the mass slaughter of up to a million Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces during and after the First World War.
The 53-year old journalist provoked widespread anger in Turkey for having characterized the killings as genocide.
Last year a Turkish court confirmed a suspended six-month jail sentence handed down to Mr Dink for an article in which he exhorted fellow Armenians to “purify their blood of hatred for Turks.”
The prosecution was unswayed by his argument that it was a call for peace and ruled that it was an “insult to Turkishness” an offense that is punishable by a maximum three year jail sentence.
Mr Dink had been preparing to appeal his case before the European Court of Human Rights.
The EU’s enlargement commissioner, Olli Rehn today said, “I am shocked and saddened by this brutal act of violence. I trust that the Turkish authorities will fully investigate this crime and will bring the perpetrators to justice.”
Turkey’s conservative prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, pledged to track down the killers “no matter if they are Turkish or foreign”.
“A bullet has been fired at Turkish democracy and free speech,” he said.
Despite Mr Erdogan’s pledge to track down the killers, Armenian activists claim that scores of Turkish writers and academics face prosecution under laws introduced by Mr Erdogan’s government that make it an offence to insult Turkey by making references to the massacre of Armenians during the First World War.
They include Turkey’s best know author and first Nobel prize laureate, Orhan Pamuk, who was prosecuted on charges of “insulting Turkishness” for telling a Swiss newspaper that “one million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in these lands but no one but I dares talk about it.”
Mr Pamuk’s case was dropped last year on a technicality.
Turkey denies that the events of 1915 constituted genocide saying no more than 300,000 Armenians perished at the time.
Turkey insists most of the Armenians died from hunger and disease after they were forcibly deported from eastern Turkey for having collaborated with invading Russian forces in the last days of the Ottoman Empire.
Anyone who challenges this official version of history risks prosecution in Turkey, as did Mr Dink. A fervent champion of Turkish-Armenian dialogue, Mr Dink managed to anger his fellow Armenians by insisting that it was time to set aside the past and move on.
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