At least 20,000 marched in Istanbul Jan. 19 to mark five years since the murder of prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink [2]—and to protest the lack of justice in his case. Marchers carried black signs reading "We are all Hrant, we are all Armenian," written in Turkish and Armenian. Three people have been imprisoned in the slaying of the writer, but charges of official negligence or state collusion were rejected. A 17-year-old Turkish nationalist soccer player was convicted of the killing, but earlier this week an Istanbul court acquitted 19 suspected accomplices.The journalist, shot dead outside the Istanbul offices of Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, had angered Turkish nationalists by describing the mass killing of Armenians a century ago as genocide. (CNN [3], BBC News [4], Jan. 19)
See our last posts on Turkey [5] and the Armenian struggle [6].
