Turkey: Journalist's death puts focus on nationalism

Yigal Schleifer 1/22/07

The murder of a prominent and outspoken ethnic Armenian journalist has sent shock waves throughout Turkey, raising questions about whether a recent nationalist upsurge has taken a violent turn. The killing threatens to pose a serious challenge to the government's already embattled democratization and political reform efforts.

The journalist, Hrant Dink, was the editor of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly newspaper Agos and a vocal critic of Turkey's treatment of its religious minorities and of its policy of rejecting claims that the mass killing of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in 1915 was genocide.

Dink was put on trial several times for "insulting" Turkish identity with his writings; in 2005 he was convicted in one of the cases and handed a suspended six-month prison sentence.

The editor was shot three times in broad daylight near the entrance to the newspaper's offices in Istanbul on January 19. A teenage suspect from the Black Sea city of Trabzon, Ogun Samast, has confessed to the shooting, police have announced. Samast is not known to have links to any militant organizations, according to officials.

"Those who created nationalist sentiment in Turkey have fed such a monster that there are many youngsters on the streets who do not find the ... state nationalist enough and are ready to take the law into their own hands," columnist Ismet Berkan wrote on January 20 in Radikal, one of Turkey's main dailies, about the murder.

The last few years have seen Turkey engaged in a deep internal struggle. On the one hand, the country's drive towards European Union membership has resulted in significant political reforms, particularly regarding democratization and human rights, and the freeing up of the debate on what had previously been taboo subjects, such as the 1915 killing of ethnic Armenians.

On the other hand, the EU-related reforms have been met with a strong nationalist backlash. Nationalist lawyers and prosecutors, for example, have been able to use a law, known as article 301, to charge writers and journalists like Dink and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate Orhan Pamuk with the crime of insulting the state as a way of stifling the emerging debates and putting the brakes on Turkey's EU bid.

"In a sense, both sides have been sharpening their axes, thinking that the EU question is the final intellectual battle in Turkey," said Ali Carkoglu, a professor of political science at Istanbul's Sabanci University. "It touches on everything that is salient in Turkish politics: the Islam vs. secularism debate, democratization and the extent to which individual human rights are to be protected."

"These [anti-EU] groups seem to have nothing more than the argument that some views are bad and should not be voiced," he added.

For many Turks, the killing of Dink harkens back to the turbulent 1970's and 1980's, when journalists and intellectuals were frequently the victims of ideologically inspired violence. Although Turkey has moved forward, some wonder whether Dink's murder is an indication that the political gains made over the last few years have yet to be consolidated.

"By Turkish standards, [Dink] was playing in a way that the nationalists were not used to. In a way, he took too many risks, he underestimated his opponents," said Rifat Bali, an independent Istanbul-based researcher who studies Turkey's minority communities. "The message of the murder is 'You shut up, know your limits as an Armenian or a non-Muslim and do not go public often and repeatedly, otherwise it will turn out bad for you.'"

"Some of the ultranationalist core of Turkey has not changed," Bali continued. "It is a militant core that is ready, if necessary, to murder its ideological opponents."

Unlike in the past, Turkey's government promptly responded to the murder, sending top officials to oversee the investigation. The quick arrest of Samast is also being seen as positive sign, since in the past perpetrators of such crimes were rarely caught. The teenager's father identified his son for the police after seeing a television broadcast of a clip from a security camera that showed the gunman fleeing the scene.

"A bullet has been fired at democracy and freedom of expression. I condemn the traitorous hands behind this disgraceful murder," Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on television soon after Dink was murdered. "This was an attack on our peace and stability."

But experts here say the murder poses a major challenge for the Turkish government, led by the moderately Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP). With its EU bid already suffering – negotiations with Brussels have been partially suspended since November – the killing of a journalist who had already been the target of legal proceedings that were strongly condemned by the EU will only increase the pressure on Ankara and further tarnish its image in Europe. [For details, see the Eurasia Insight archive].

"The image problem was already bad and this can only make it worse. Turkey will be seen as a country not only curtailing freedom of expression, but the country that can also produce people who will assassinate writers and thinkers," said Suat Kiniklioglu, director of the German Marshall Fund's office in Turkey.

"The atmosphere that [prompted] this person to go after Hrant Dink with a gun was really the result of the atmosphere created by the trials brought on by article 301," Kiniklioglu said. "In that respect, the government will need now to really take article 301 seriously."

Outside of the offices of Agos, an Armenian word that refers to a place where a seed is growing, a makeshift memorial has been created near the spot where Dink was gunned down. The night following the journalist's murder, a crowd of more than 100 people gathered at the site, at one point some of them chanting, "We are all Hrant. We are all Armenians."

Armenian political leaders and the media have harshly condemned the murder, with many arguing that the slaying indicates that Turkey is ill-suited for membership in the European Union. On January 22, a series of youth organizations marched to the European Union's mission in Yerevan to protest Dink's death, with one placard proclaiming "Turkey, your hands are in blood," the online news service PanArmenian.Net reported.

A press release on the Agos website states that the Agos's aim was to promote understanding between Turkey and Armenia. Dink, who founded the paper in 1996, used his last few columns to write about his legal woes. "For me, 2007 is likely to be a hard year," he wrote in one column. "The trials will continue, new ones will be started. Who knows what other injustices I will be up against."

In his final column, Dink wrote about the increasing amount of hate mail he was getting, including one letter that scared him enough that he went to a local prosecutor to ask for protection, although without any luck.

Although he opposed the official Turkish position on the Armenian question, Dink was also a strong critic of the Armenian Diaspora and what he saw as its obsession with vilifying Turkey.

"I don't know anyone else like him who raised his voice for minorities and democracy in Turkey," commented Murat Celikkan, a veteran Turkish journalist and human rights activist. "Intellectually he was a very important figure for Turkey. We don't have anyone else like him."

Editor's Note: Yigal Schleifer is a freelance journalist based in Istanbul.

Posted January 22, 2007 © Eurasianet