Thousands Mourn Dink in Turkish Streets

Aged 53, Dink was killed by several shots fired at him on the 19th of January outside the premises of his privately-owned newspaper in Istanbul.

A well-known journalist and one who was respected by his colleagues, Dink was the target of several prosecutions over his views on the massacre of Armenians under the Ottoman empire. In 2005, he received six-month suspended sentence for “humiliating Turkish identity.” He was prosecuted against in September 2006 over an interview he gave to Reuters in which he referred to the massacres in Anatolia during the First World War as “genocide.” He had been facing a possible three-year prison sentence.

A young man, Ogun Samast, was arrested on the evening of 20 January. He is said to have admitted to firing several shots at Dink. He reportedly said he did not regret shooting Dink and did it because the journalist “insulted the Turkish people.”

Followed by an enormous, largely silent throng, a black hearse slowly bore the flower-strewn coffin of editor Hrant Dink to an Armenian church, where he was eulogized as a voice of courage and conscience.

A teenage nationalist has confessed to gunning down the 52-year-old journalist outside his newspaper's office Jan. 19. The funeral shut down much of downtown Istanbul, whose narrow back alleys and wide boulevards are normally the scene of a raucous commercial free-for-all.

Onlookers, many dabbing their eyes, leaned from balconies and watched from doorways as the cortege passed by. Some applauded, in the traditional sign of respect for honored dead.