"Dink's murder has shamed Turkey, just as his prosecution under the
preposterous article 301 of the new penal code, which created the
offence of insulting Turkishness, shamed it."
"What rankled most with him to the end was that he had been held by the state to have insulted Turks. "I wish he could hear the thousands of people lining up all the way from Osmanbey to Harbiye shouting, 'We are all Hrant, we are all Armenian!'" a friend of his told me on the night of the killing.
preposterous article 301 of the new penal code, which created the
offence of insulting Turkishness, shamed it."
"What rankled most with him to the end was that he had been held by the state to have insulted Turks. "I wish he could hear the thousands of people lining up all the way from Osmanbey to Harbiye shouting, 'We are all Hrant, we are all Armenian!'" a friend of his told me on the night of the killing.
Only those who know Turkey can possibly imagine the emotional charge released by those last four words. Just as they will have winced at what the boy who shot him in the back of the
head shouted as he ran away: "I have killed the gavur [the infidel, the foreigner]." Ogun Samast, the 16-year-old who has apparently now confessed to killing Dink, comes from Trabzon, where last spring, after the publication of the Muhammad cartoons, a boy of 15 walked into a church and shot an Italian priest in the back of the head."
Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | He believed his love for his country would save him
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