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Outspoken Editor Is Slain in Turkey
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In late 2005, Turks saw Dink lose his composure, crying on national television as he discussed his latest court case and what it was like to live among people who hated him and what he stood for.
"I'm living together with Turks in this country," he said in an October interview as he contemplated his trial. "I don't think I could live with an identity of having insulted them in this country. . . . If I am unable to come up with a positive result, it will be honorable for me to leave this country."
Turkey's relationship with its Armenian community has long been fraught with tension, controversy and painful memories of a brutal past. Much of Turkey's once-sizable Armenian population was killed or driven out beginning around 1915 in what an increasing number of countries are recognizing as the first genocide of the 20th century.
Turks vehemently deny that their ancestors committed genocide, however, and saying so is deemed tantamount to treason. In the 1970s and '80s, tensions were further inflamed as Armenians seeking revenge killed dozens of Turkish diplomats .
Turkey, which is 99 percent Muslim, and Armenia, which claims to be the first country to have officially adopted Christianity, share a border. But it is closed, and the two countries have no formal diplomatic relations.
The Washington-based Armenian Assembly of America issued a statement Friday calling Dink "one of the most prominent Armenian voices in Turkey."
"Hrant Dink was a man of principle, convictions and courage, and the Armenian community mourns him worldwide as a loss for humanity," the group's executive director, Bryan Ardouny, said in an interview.
Ardouny, who had met Dink in October when he addressed the Armenian-American Bar Association, described the slain journalist as an "outspoken activist who was a living bridge between Armenians and Turks in Turkey, a country where 70,000 Armenians still live and remain vulnerable and unprotected even 92 years after the Armenian genocide."
Washington Post correspondent Nora Boustany in Washington contributed to this report.
