Armenian journalist shot dead in Istanbul attack

TURKEY:Hrant Dink, probably the most prominent member of Turkey's 70,000-strong Armenian community, was murdered in central Istanbul yesterday in an attack the Turkish prime minister described as an attempt to destabilise the country.

"A bullet was fired at freedom of thought and democratic life," prime minister Tayyip Erdogan said, an hour after Mr Dink (53) was shot outside the offices of Agos, the bilingual Armenian-Turkish newspaper he edited.

Mr Dink had been complaining of death threats for weeks. "My computer is full of angry, threatening mails," he wrote in his Agos column on January 10th.

One mail threatening his children worried him particularly, he wrote, adding that police had taken no action after he complained.

Set up in 1996, the weekly Agos was the fruit of his belief that only dialogue could resolve the bitter memories left by the mass murder of Ottoman Armenians during the first World War.

An outspoken critic of Turkey's ongoing denial that what happened in 1915 was a genocide, he was equally opposed to international attempts to politicise the issue.

When France's parliament voted last year to make denying the Armenian genocide a crime, he vowed to travel there and deny it.

"Let's see which legal system works faster," he said, referring to the six-month sentence he received in Turkey last June for "insulting Turkishness".

They were the same charges that had been levelled at Nobel prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk. Mr Dink was the only Turk to be convicted.

Like Orhan Pamuk, Mr Dink was taken to court by ultra-nationalists last year. Many believe they were behind his killing too.

"This was an organised attempt by those who want to destroy Turkey's European Union aspirations and cast Turkey into darkness," said Akin Birdal, former head of Turkey's Human Rights Association, himself shot and severely wounded in 1998 by suspected nationalists.

Others in the 500-strong crowd that had gathered around the shooting scene early last evening drew parallels with last year's murder of a senior judge.

Originally taken for an Islamist, the murderer later turned out to have relations with shady ultra-nationalist groups which, some claim, had links with the state.

Mr Dink's daughter Sera, who was in the office at the time of the attacks, was too distraught for such debates. "They shot my father from behind, they couldn't even face him," she shouted from a second-floor balcony overlooking her father's body.

Then she collapsed and had to be carried inside by Agos staff.

Down in the street, where traffic had been brought to a standstill by the swelling crowd, many people were angry.

"The people will make the gangs pay for this," shouted a group of 50 young left-wingers, their fists clenched in the air.

"This is Hrant's country, this is our country," said Orhan Alkaya, a friend of the dead man. "The people who did this will lose."

But the overwhelming sense was of deep grief. "I can't believe this has happened," one woman sobbed to a Turkish journalist who had tears rolling down his cheeks."I didn't know Mr Dink very well," said Sinan Akyuz, who works in a nearby café. "But he came in here from time to time, and he seemed a good man."