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Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2007 > January > 23 > Entry
Remembering Hrant Dink
(Hrant Dink (in sport coat) speaks to Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellows in 2005)
This is a bit off topic for this forum and so I’ve hesitated to write about it here to this point. But I just can’t get the story of Hrant Dink, the Turkish-Armenian journalist who was shot and killed outside his office last week, off my mind. Today his funeral prompted a demonstration in favor of free speech and tolerance in Turkey.
In 2005, I met Dink in Istanbul when I was traveling with a group of international journalists as part of the Knight Wallace Journalism Fellowships through the University of Michigan.
Our group of about 16 journalists, including 12 Americans, met Dink for lunch at a wonderful rooftop restaurant with a spectacular sun-washed view of the amazing city of Istanbul. Turkey is a unique country in that it is Muslim but not Arab. Istanbul has a very European feel to it, but much of the country is rural and more typically middle eastern.
The nation has been working toward European Union membership and modernizing in many ways. But like the U.S. and other nations, it has had a troubled past in its dealings with ethnic minorities within its own borders.
Dink, a newspaper editor, believed straight talk about the past was the key to a better future for Turkey. He was an ethnic Armenian, a minority group historically oppressed in Turkey. In one of the nation’s darkest chapters, more than a million ethnic Armenians died around the time of World War I in Turkey in what many historians now say was primarily an incident of genocide. The Turkish government’s official version of events denies this.
By writing about the genocide and incidents of minority oppression, Dink exposed another of Turkey’s challenges — a tradition of discomfort with free speech. Turkish law prohibits speech that insults the state, and Dink was among several writers who have been prosecuted for simply writing their conscience.
Our group’s meeting with Dink was one of the highlights of a week in Turkey. He was brilliant and passionate and deeply committed to his cause and to journalistic freedom. His funeral brought an outpouring of sentiment for greater freedoms of speech and against violence.
It’s very easy to be a journalist in Dayton, Ohio. But elsewhere around the world, this can be a dangerous job. People like Dink, who know the dangers but write anyway because they believe their ideas are important, have tremendous courage.
It seems some good could result from Dink’s death if it means Turkey will be forced to truly confront these problems. I’m just sorry the world has to be deprived of a man like Dink for important change to occur.
(Image credit: Stephanie Reitz)
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Journalism
Comments
By Mary
January 23, 2007 5:02 PM | Link to this
This is not off topic at all when you consider the root of the evil is based on ignorance. Education is supposed to help fix that. We need to learn from history and learn about other groups. As the romantic old song goes “To know, know, know you is to love, love, love you.” Maybe that is carrying things a little bit too far. However, I very much agree with your last sentence. I am both angry and sorry. I guess one of the first things Hitler did was control journalism, according to one movie I saw. One prominent and conscientous editor jumped to his death. It bothers me flag drapped coffins being off-loaded military aircraft were put off limits for US journalism photography a few years ago. I think our journalism photography should have fought that in our courts - or did they? A lot of the conspiracy books address the problems of journalism being controlled by fewer and fewer groups in our own country.