Nothing but ambiguous

The Killing of Hrant Dink in Turkish Discourse

The assassination of Hrant Dink was in several respects a decisive moment, for it revealed the state-of-the-art of Vergangenheitsbewaltigung in Turkey and ultimately the Turkish-Armenian reconciliation process.(2) This paper examines how Hrant Dink’s assasination was framed in the Turkish discourse.(3)

The analysis is part of the overall research agenda on the phenomenon of Turkish denial of 1915. The denial politics of Turkey has not only been successful in blocking international genocide acknowledgements for a long time but also in determining the academic discourse on the Armenian Genocide. Not surprisingly, there is hardly any analysis on the Armenian history of 1915 that does not address the denial phenomenon in either way.

However, most studies approach the denial phenomenon in a rather conventional manner. Scholars either look at the Turkish state’s politics and practices, or at the civil society’s increasing interest and openness for alternative readings of the history of 1915.(4) Such a distinction between politics and society, however, reduces the denial phenomenon to the Turkish state’s past politics. It also implies that the coming to terms with the past of the Turkish society takes place outside the framework of the denial discourse which, as already said above, is by and large equated with the Turkish state’s political practices and defense mechanisms against genocide charges.

However, prioritizing the Turkish state as the key actor of the denial discourse about the Armenian Genocide overlooks the power that rests in the discourse itself.(5) Put differently, the understanding of the working mechanisms of discursive structures on the one hand and the interplay with political and societal options on the other is underdeveloped. The following analysis addresses this lacuna: It looks at the reactions of the Turkish society upon Hrant Dink’s assasination and relates these reactions to the conventional discourse structures in Turkey about the Armenian Genocide. In doing this, the study gives an insight to the question on how far conventional (denialist) discourse patterns about the Armenian Genocide have been reproduced, challenged, or changed in the course of reactions to the assassination of Dink.

In essence, the analysis shows that although actors had the opportunity to challenge denialist discourse patterns, they didn’t do so and instead chose framings which ultimately reproduced and fostered the denial discourse.

The context: the killing of Hrant Dink as a breaking point

The news of Hrant Dink’s assassination shook Turkey. It turned into a major political scandal, for it became evident that it could have been prevented if the state security institutions had taken the information from the circles close to the assassin and his clients seriously. The dimension of carelessness if not wanton negligence and active participation of state institutions and actors in the murder is indicated by the headline “Only Hrant was not informed about his killing.”(6)

Helplessness, mourning, and shame caught especially the Turkish liberal elites on the news of the killing. Thousands gathered spontaneously on the streets and mourned the death. The funeral turned into a mass protest with tens of thousands accompanying Dink on his last journey, which again led to widespread relief.(7)

This solidarity, however, was accompanied by an outright reactionary discourse right from the beginning.(8) Especially the slogan of the crowds at the funeral, “We are all Armenians,” caused a controversial debate. The nationalists were quick with producing the counter-slogan, “We are all Turks.” The Turkish daily Hurriyet ran a poll for three days on its website asking the readers whether they found the slogan appropriate.

In essence, the killing of Dink meant the breaking of a tacit societal agreement not to hurt Armenians in the open, lest to commit a politically motivated crime. This silent consensus goes back to the national narrative that the Turkish Republic does not discrimate among its citizens.(9) With the increasing pressure on Turkey—first through militant activism beginning in the 1970’s and later by political genocide acknowledgments—to come to terms with 1915, the narrative of equality became particularly important. Accordingly, it was stressed that the Armenians had no problems in Turkey, were content and safe regardless of the implication that this was by itself the very indication of discrimation. From this perspective, the killing of Hrant Dink—an Armenian citizen of Turkey—brought to the open the blatant discrepancy between social reality and the construction of “our equal, safe and happy Armenians.” Hence, it was the breaking of this taboo that essentially constituted the societal and political trauma in Turkey following the killing of Dink.

While the breaking of the tacit consensus by killing Dink posed a problem that the entire society had to cope with, it had additional implications for the Turkish liberal elites. First of all, Dink had close personal ties in a wide reaching network among Turkish intellectuals. This meant that a considerable group of leading Turkish media and other public representatives had hard times emotionally in individually coping with the loss of a friend. Secondly, the assassination all of a sudden stopped the relative optimism of Turkish liberal circles about a gradual opening of the Turkish society with regard to the Armenian Question.(10)

The text: Turkish mainstream dailies and WATS as discourse arenas

The assassination of Hrant Dink was on the front-page of the Turkish mainstream dailies for weeks, resulting in hundreds of articles and commentaries.(11) Naturally, the killing also dominated the debate of the Workshop for Armenian Turkish Scholarship (WATS), a platform for academic discussions on Turkish-Armenian issues.(12) While the mainstream Turkish media reaches a domestic audience, meaning Turkish society and politics, WATS has a mixed audience in several respects.(13) The capacity of these two arenas, however, is not limited to their respective audiences; both arenas can also shape external discourses.

Common to a vast majority of the texts in both arenas was an instrumental logic and strategic thinking that ultimately had a concealing effect on the distinctive characteristic of the event. Instrumentality, however, took a wide spectrum of manifestations ranging from outright political calculations to more subtle forms of rational reasoning. One example of an overtly instrumental approach is the very first reaction of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan lamenting the timing of the killing (manidar) and alluding to the genocide resolution that was being debated in the United States. Mehmet Ali Birand, a well-known liberal journalist in Turkey, was also immediately concerned with strategic political considerations than condemning the assassination as such.

However, moves to immediately go back to normalcy were met partially with criticism. The editor-in-chief of Radikal, Ismet Berkan, complained that “shamelessness (was) without limits in this country,” where even the least bit of respect was lacking.(14) However, such criticism about strategic calculations and instrumental framing was the exception rather than the rule.

Deja-vu: Turkey as victim

A less overtly instrumental approach to the killing was the initially predominant presentation of the killing under the category “the bullets hit Turkey.”(15) This framing turned Turkey and the Turkish nation into the “real” victims of the crime. According to this approach, the assassin and his clients had obviously not been aware that they “had in fact shot Turkey.”(16) Very few voices chose to give priority to Hrant Dink in terms of victimship, as is the case in the headline “Racists’ target Hrant Dink: assassinated with three bullets.”(17)

The victim discourse in the mainstream media focusing on Turkey and the Turkish nation neglected to talk about the socio-psychological implications for the Armenian community.(18) Hurriyet’s editor-in-chief, Ertugrul Ozkok, for example made a case for the murder by stressing the societal and socio-economic conditions that would lead a young man to commit such a crime.(19) This move was an attempt for empathy with the murderer, who was portrayed as being himself a victim of socio-structural forces.

The concerns of the Turkish society were not forgotten on the Workshop for Armenian-Turkish Scholarship (WATS) listserve either. Shortly after the assassination one of the founders of WATS, Fatma Muge Gocek, made a plea to go on with reconciliation efforts.(20) For this to take place, she stressed the neccessity to be sensitive to the socio-psychological needs of both the Armenian and Turkish societies with regard to the term “genocide.” Dink’s usage of the term depending on which audience he had addressed was portrayed as an exemplary approach for such an appropriate sensitivity towards both societies. Accordingly, when “talking to the Turks in Turkey, he would...not make the employment of the term ‘genocide’ his top priority. [Instead, he] especially resisted to exercise his freedom of expression through the specific employment of the term ‘genocide’: He ultimately was not tried and sentenced for the use of that term, but ironically for his discussion of the prejudice as it pertained not to Turks but the Armenian Diaspora.”(21)

This presentation was in several respects highly problematic. As a key actor in the Turkish-Armenian reconciliation discourse, Gocek legitimized her suggestion to be sensitive in using the term “genocide” not only by referring to Dink but also by putting equal weight on the needs of both societies. Under different circumstances such an approach could be characterized as balanced but in this particular context, where an Armenian in Turkey was murdered because he was an Armenian, the timing of the demand to be equally sensitive to the needs of both societies reveals the neglect to account for the unequal situation in which Armenians in Turkey actually live.(22) From this perspective, the balanced approach was a similar shift to the concerns of the Turkish society and Turkey as in the mainstream media.(23)

In contrast to the almost total neglect of taking the situation of the Armenian community into account, Rakel Dink, the wife of Hrant Dink, became the exclusive center of interest after her speech at her husband’s funeral. Her “Last letter to the beloved” was published in full text in almost all the dailies under consideration, was translated into English on the WATS forum and led to a lot of commentaries. All of Turkey was apparently deeply impressed by the unresentful stance that Rakel Dink revealed within few days.

Many commentators who chose to invoke the framing that what happened was not good for the country also stressed in abundance that Dink had been a passionate “Turkey lover” (Turkiye sevdalisi).(24) He had loved this country more than anything else. Not least, he had been the very symbol of reconciliation and tolerance (bir uzlasi bir hosgoru semboluydu). The underlying subtle instrumental logic becomes clear when one raises the counter-factual question: What if he had not loved this country? Or, what if his killing would not have damaged the image of Turkey?(25) The same goes for the innumerable individual accounts and personal memories about Hrant Dink that mostly stressed his strengths as a human being along with his engagement for a democratic Turkish society. Here we go again: What if he had not been an upright colleague, a courageous fellow, a dear friend? Not least, individual memories emphasizing almost exclusively his human qualities and sensitive political style, constructing him into “a man with a heart of gold” eclipsed the ultimate political concern of Dink about the still systematic and racist discrimination of the Armenian community and other minorities in today’s Turkey. Instead of this distinct political agenda of Dink’s, the emphasis was put on his passionate engagement for a real democratic Turkey.

Individual memories are legitimate in principle and are, as such, not questionable. In the current context, however, a great number of people exposing their individual experiences was problematic in several respects. First of all, remembering Dink turned into a contested field in which those having had personal ties to him not only claimed a monopoly over his legacy in terms of his ideas but also legitimized future strategies for the course of Turkish-Armenian relations in asserting that he would have thought that way—as was the case in the reconciliation plea shown above. As a consequence, all who had not known Dink personally and who mostly happened to be non-Turks were not competitive. Therefore, the claim over Dink’s way of thinking in terms of Armenian-Turkish relations led to heated and controversial debates in the WATS discourse arena. Here, the claim of having been close to Dink became a kind of conversation stopper, a killer-argument, so to speak. Hence, the problem was not only the strategic seizure of Dink’s legacy but also the underlying thinking that his alleged way of thinking was the only legitimate way.

Continuity versus break: the frame of ‘another journalist killed’

Another immediate move in the mainstream media to frame the event was to subsume the killing under the category of “another journalist killed” thereby stressing continuity rather than the distinctiveness of the killing. Hurriyet was among the forerunners of this move. Already in the live-coverage of the killing, Dink was presented as the “62nd assassined journalist victim since Hasan Fehmi 1909.”(26)

The frame of “another journalist killed” was invoked by the overwhelming majority of the commentators. It was an inclusive frame that provided a basis for identification. In addition, while identifying with Dink as a journalist, commentators also reproduced the topos of “damage to Turkey” when relating the timing of Dink’s killing—like that of its famous precedents Ugur Mumcu in 1993 and Ahmet Taner Kislali in 1999—to a critical moment in Turkish domestic and foreign politics.(27)

The construction of continuity suffered, however, from internal contradictions. One case in point is Guneri Civaoglu’s approach to the killing. Civaoglu stressed the continuity of the current event in the recent history of Turkey in two articles. In the first one, he applied the category of “another journalist victim.”(28) In the second article, he jumped to a different category of continuity when feeling obliged to remember the victims of the attacks of ASALA on Turkish diplomats.(29) While Civaoglu’s take on the “other martyrs” (diger sehitleri anmak) implied that he included Dink in the category of “our losses,” his revival of the ASALA memory in the current context produced a contradiction in terms of the logic on which the construction of continuity was based. Including Dink in the category of “another journalist killed” highlighted the professional identity and was an attempt to eclipse the ethnic nature of the killing of Hrant Dink. The talk of ASALA, however, emphasized the ethnic roots of the current event all the more but put the blame, at the same time, on the Armenians.

In the end, Civaoglu’s attempt to make Dink “one of us” by including him in the list of national martyrs failed, for it suffered not only due to the contradictory and in a sense mutually exclusive logics of constructions of continuity, but also because of the effect that bringing ASALA back into the discourse about Hrant Dink had. Intentionally or not, with this blurring he put the blame of the current killing ultimately on the Armenian side.

‘Our’ Armenians versus the diaspora

Empirically, the distinction between Armenians in Turkey and diaspora Armenians is among the first and most robust instruments or strategies in the Turkish discourse about the Armenian Genocide that goes back to the 1960’s.(30) In the 1970’s, as the unfolding of a systematic targeting of mainly Turkish diplomats forced Turkish society to remember 1915, the need to differentiate between “our” Armenians, “who condemn the attack even more than we do”(31) and the diaspora fanatics (azili Turk dusmanlari) increased, albeit parallel to still abundant populistic anti-Armenian images.(32) Such a differentiation was mainly due to the concern not to provoke another Sept. 6–7, 1955.

The construction of a dichotomy between “‘our’ Armenians and the rest” ceased to play an important role in the general discourse on the Armenian Genocide since the turn of the millennium. Although the Turkish Foreign Ministry’s policies to counter genocide resolutions has shifted during the last few years on putting pressure on the Armenian Republic (thinking that Armenia will influence the various diaspora communites in their acknowledgement strategies), the blame in the overall discourse for the political awakening of the “Armenian question” in Europe and elsewhere has been put increasingly on the European Union. The revival of the “Armenian question” is seen as an indicator that the Europeans are instrumentalizing the past of Turkey in order to prevent its accession into the EU. In this process historical images have also been revived. Accordingly, the Europeans are continuing their “historical anti-Turkish mission” that already had led to the downfall of the Ottoman Empire.(33)

In sum then, empirically the diaspora Armenians are not (exclusively) made responsible for the increasing international awareness about the Armenian Genocide since the turn of the milennium. In contrast to this overall development, that the diaspora Armenians are not playing a decisive role in the Turkish discourse since the turn of the millennium, the dichotomy of “‘our Armenians’ and the diasporans” has been revived all the more in the aftermath of Dink’s assasination and has taken the form of “pitting Hrant against diaspora Armenians.”(34)

What makes this development interesting is not that the frame still provides a societally accepted interpretation pattern when revived. Rather, interesting are the carriers of this revival and the forum, since this time the revival goes back to the most committed actors in the improvement of Turkish-Armenian relations and was put forward by the Turkish members of the WATS forum. A prominent Turkish leftist was but one of the most influential actors in this revival process, who went so far as to put the blame on the Armenian diaspora for the killing of Hrant Dink.

This evolution of the “‘our Armenians’ and diaspora Armenians” frame in the Turkish discourse shows two things: First, that there is room for changing conventional discourse patterns that are inherently denialist in thrust (as is the case with the construction of “good” and “bad” Armenians without asking for reasons for possible different outlooks of different Armenian communities or putting the inherently discriminatory aspects of such a distinction into question); and second, that there are no real actors using such rooms for putting forth new discursive approaches and challenging the denialist ones.

A never-ending text?

The Turkish discourse following the killing of Hrant Dink revealed an ambiguous picture, stemming mainly from the discrepancy between the traumatic experience caused by the assassination and the reluctance of the Turkish society and politics to face the killing as an ultimate breakdown of the national narrative about the equality of all citizens of the republic regardless their ethnic origins. The dominant framings in the discourse were in essence hiding the racist thrust of the killing. The emphasis on the continuities rather than the distinctive aspects of the assassination was an effective strategy toward concealing the particularly tragic and politically relevant aspect of the killing, namely, that the first Armenian in the history of the republic who had ever attempted to step outside the proper place that was assigned to him by the dominant society had literally not survived such an undertaking. Particularly telling in terms of the relative lack of challenges to the conventional denialist Turkish discourse was that even the most liberal Turks, who at the same time had known Hrant Dink’s political concerns, used instrumental framings that enforced rather than challenged the denialist structures of the Turkish discourse on the Armenian Genocide.
 

EndNotes

1) I want to thank Bilgin Ayata, Ayda Erbal, Ani Degirmencioglu, Khatchig Mouradian, Marc Mamigonian, Anjareen Rana, and Stephanie Reulen for comments, proofreading and for providing me with information.

2) The German equivalent of coming to terms with the past (Vergangenheitbewaltigung) characterizes the relatively exemplary and exceptional manner of Germany’s coping patterns with the Holocaust.

3) The case study is part of my dissertation thesis, “Politics of Denial: The Development of the Discourse about the Murder of the Ottoman Armenians of 1915 in Turkey between Foreign Political Pressure and Nationalistic Defense Mechanisms,” submitted to the political science department of the University of Konstanz.

4) See among others for the first stream of denial research: Richard G. Hovannisian, Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999); Housepian-Dobkin, “What Genocide? What Holocaust? News From Turkey, 1915–1923: A Case Study” in Toward the Understanding and Prevention of Genocide, edited by W. I. Charny (Boulder: Westview Press, 1984); Charny and Daphna Fromer, “Denying the Armenian Genocide: Patterns of Thinking as Defence-Mechanisms” in “Patterns of Prejudice,” 1998, vol. 32, pp. 39–49; Vahakn N. Dadrian, Key Elements in the Turkish Denial of the Armenian Genocide: A Case Study of Distortion and Falsification (Toronto: The Zoryan Institute, 1999); Hilmar Kaiser, “From Empire to Republic: The Continuities of Turkish Denial” in the Armenian Review, 2003, vol. 48, pp. 1–24; John Torpey, “Dynamics of Denial. Responses to Past Atrocities in Germany, Turkey and Japan,” paper read at “Ideologies of Revolution, Nation, and Empire: Political Ideas, Parties, and Practices at the End of the Ottoman Empire 1878–1922,” in April 2005 in Salzburg, Austria. For the second stream, see Fatma Muge Gocek, “Reconstructing the Turkish Historiography on the Armenian Massacres and Deaths of 1915” in Looking Backward, Moving Forward, edited by R. G. Hovannisian (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2003); Aysegul Altinay, “In Search of Silenced Grandparents: Ottoman Armenian Survivors and Their (Muslim) Grandchildren” in Der Volkermord an den Armeniern, die Turkei und Europa. The Armenian Genocide, Turkey and Europe, edited by H. L. Kieser and E. Plozza (Zurich: Chronos, 2003).

5) Following Ole Waever, “Discursive Approaches” in European Integration Theory, edited by A. Wiener and T. Diez (Oxford University Press, 2004), the current analysis softens the understanding of the relationship between discourse—broadly understood as a set of articulations—and actors as defined in poststructuralist Foucaldian discourse analysis. While the latter assumes discourse as being prior to actors in the sense that subjects do not exist outside discourse, the theoretical assumption of this study is that actors have at least the possibility to choose among differents sets of discourse patterns. In other words, the existing discourse patterns (regardless of the question of carriership and origin) about the Armenian Genocide determine on the one hand the range of possibilities of how to frame a related event such as the killing of Hrant Dink. On the other hand, they are at the same time dependent on actors because discourses are produced and reproduced by the choices of actors over which of the existing discourse frames to actually use and which not. It is this kind of “linguistic structuration” that provides for the theoretical possibility for change of discourses, in a general sense, and in the current context the discourse about the Armenian Genocide in Turkey, in particular. For the concept of linguistic-structuration, see Diez, 1999, “Speaking ‘Europe’: the politics of integration discourse” in the Journal of European Public Policy, vol. 6, pp. 598–613.

6) See “Oldurulecegini bir tek Hrant’a soylememisler” in Radikal, Feb. 7, 2007.

7) The relief after the funeral is particularly mirrored in Hadi Uluengin’s piece, “Ciktik alin akiyla (Finally we made it out clean),” Hurriyet, Jan. 24, 2007. For another article indicating relief—albeit in a more revanchist tone—see Oktay Eksi, “Ders veren cenaze (The lessons of a funeral)” in Hurriyet, Jan. 24, 2007. For other examples, see the headlines “Turkiye evladini ugurladi (Turkey said farewell to her son)” in Hurriyet, Jan. 24, 2007; “Istanbul Istanbul olali boyle bir toren gorulmedi (Istanbul has never seen such a funeral since times immemorial)” in Radikal, Jan. 24, 2007; “Sizce Hrant Dink oldu mu? (Do you think that Hrant Dink died?)” in Milliyet, Jan. 24, 2007; “Topragindan ayrilmadi (He did not leave his soil)” in Yeni Safak, Jan. 24, 2007; “Buyuk Ugurlama (Grand farewell)” in Cumhuriyet, Jan. 24, 2007; and “Butun Turkiye ugurladi (All of Turkey said farewell)” in Zaman, Jan. 24, 2007.

8) Two telling examples are the comparison of the killing of Dink with one of the main architects of the destruction of the Ottoman Armenians, Talat Pasha, who was shot down in his Berlin exile in 1921 by an Armenian student. The author of the article argued that Talat, like Dink, had been shot down from behind and that his shoes, too, had a hole. See Murat Bardakci, “Talat Pasa cinayeti gibi (Like the murderer of Talat Pasha)” in Sabah, Jan. 20, 2007; the second example is the heading of the ultra-nationalist daily Tercuman, in which the murderer, Ogun Samast, was presented as an Armenian. See “Katil Ermeni (The murder is an Armenian)” in Tercuman, Jan. 21, 2007.

9) When former Prime Minister Tansu Ciller suggested to “expell the roughly 70,000 Armenians from Turkey” as a political means to counter international genocide acknowledgements, there was a huge public outcry as to her racist and separatist suggestion. Ciller was depicted in a Hitler-pose saying, “Well, yes. It’s an old but effective method.” See Cumhuriyet, Oct. 10, 2000. For another critical example, see Oktay Eksi, “Ciller in Kafasiyla (With Ciller’s mindset)” in Hurriyet, Oct. 8, 2000. As a result, Ciller had to step back and make clear that she had not the Armenians of Turkey in mind but the partly illegal labor force from the Armenian Republic. A similar suggestion at the end of 2006 by the former diplomat Sukru Elekdag with regard to genocide acknowledgement in the U.S. Congress also met with criticism of discrimination. For the defense of Elekdag , see Zaman, Nov. 24, 2006.

10) Indeed, recent years have shown a remarkable diversification in the remembering of the Armenian Genocide. The increasing public presence of Armenian community life especially since the publishing of the bi-lingual weekly Agos headed by Dink indicated a positive change in the socio-political atmosphere in Turkey with regard to the Armenian community. See Baskin Oran, “The Reconstruction of Armenian Identity in Turkey and the Weekly AGOS” (2006) online at www.armenews.com/article.php3?id_article=27696. On top of it, the Istanbul conference “Ottoman Armenians During the Decline of the Empire: Issues of Scientific Responsibility and Democracy” held in 2005 against heavy protests by the far right was a landmark event, one that according to the historian Halil Berktay would one day be remembered as the “fall of the Berlin Wall in the Armenian-Turkish relations” perhaps and particularly the conflict over the history. See “Erivan’da da konferans sart (Conference also necessary in Yerewan)” in Radikal, Oct. 18, 2005. Finally, a number of public outings about Armenian family members seemed to indicate a “postnationalist discourse,” as termed by Gocek (2003). While the leftist Fethiye Cetin can be considered a “usual suspect” with regard to her public outing that her grandmother was an Armenian survivor of 1915, the outing of a hard-core Kemalist such as Bekir Coskun who remembered his “private Armenian question” and “confessed” publicly that his stepgrandmother had been an Armenian survivor was a rather sensational development. See Bekir Coskun, “Benim Ermeni meselem (My private Armenian question)” in Hurriyet, Sept. 27, 2005.

11) The currents analysis is based on the editions of Hurriyet, Cumhuriyet, Zaman, Yeni Safak, and Radikal from Feb. 19–24, 2007.

12) The uniting element of the WATS group is an (ethical) committment to (academic) issues related to the Armenian-Turkish reconciliation process. Although the organizers of WATS stress the academic purpose of the group, it is inevitable that substantive political issues are at stake in the WATS communication. The attempt to separate academia and politics is itself already an odd idea. In the context of the Armenian Genocide and the Armenian-Turkish relations that is a most politicized field, the idea of having an academic interchange outside the political context seems to indicate a gross cognitive discrepancy. For the substantial social and political outcomes of such discrepancies, see Timur Kuran, Private Truths, Public Lies. The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995).

13) Several calls to disclose the WATS list membership have not succeeded. See David Davidian, “Turkish-Armenian Dialogue: A False Start” in the Armenian Weekly, April 24, 2007. One can just assume the wide range of list-serv members regarding professional and ethnic-national affiliation from observing the email traffic. The only criteria for membership seems to be being involed in Armenian-Turkish history, politics, etc. in any way.

14) Ismet Berkan, “Caresizlik ve sessizlik (Helplessness and Silence)” in Radikal, Jan. 21, 2007. For another critique on these immediate reactions, see Yasemin Congar, “Manidar (Meaningful)” in Milliyet, Jan. 22, 2007.

15) See among others Oktay Eksi, “O kursun Turkiye’ye atildi (That gun was fired against Turkey)” in Hurriyet, Jan. 20, 2007; Mustafa Unal, “Eyvah! Turkiye vuruldu (Alas! Turkey is shot)” in Zaman, Jan. 21 2007; Ali Bulac, “Kursun kime sikildi (Whom did the bullets target)” in Zaman, Jan. 22, 2007; Gunseli Ozen Ocakoglu, “Hrant Dink suikasti Turkiye’nin imajina zarar verdi (The assassination of Hrant Dink harmed the image of Turkey)” in Zaman, Jan. 22, 2007; Melih Asik, “Yine vurulduk (We are shot again)” in Milliyet, Jan. 20, 2007; compared to these examples, Altan Oymen’s heading “The Murder also shot Turkey with Hrant Dink, (Katil Hrant Dink’le birlikte Turkiye’yi de vurdu)” in Radikal, Jan. 20, 2007, seems to be a generous framing of the story in taking Dink as the victim of the assassination at least into consideration.

16) “Onu vuran eller Turkiye’yi vurduklarinin farkinda degiller,” Mehmet Ali Birand, “Hirant’i Turk Dusmanlari Oldurdu (Hrant was shot by the Enemies of the Turks)” in Hurriyet, Jan. 20, 2007.

17) “Irkcilarin Hedefi Hrant Dink uc kursunla katledildi (Racists’ target Dink—assassinated with three bullets)” in Radikal, Jan. 20, 2007.

18) It was a member of the Armenian community of Turkey who wrote about the devastating socio-psychological consequences of the killing for the community. See Hayganus, “Hepiniz Ogun Samast’siniz (You are all Ogun Samast)” in Bir Gun, Jan. 26, 2007.

19) Ertugrul Ozkok, “Sizce o silahi niye atmadi (Why do you think he did not throw away the gun)” in Hurriyet, Jan. 23, 2007.

20) Gocek, “Hrant Dink, Reconciliation and Genocide,” Jan. 28, 2007.

21) Ibidem. Hrant Dink was the only person who was actually sentenced in a series of trials against intellectuals on the basis of Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which by and large punishes those who insult Turkishness. The court sentenced him for an article in his weekly Agos, in which he in fact had criticized his fellows in the diaspora because of their alleged “anti-Turkish” stance and had appealed to the need to get rid off such anti-Turkish sentiments in order for Armenians, too, to come to terms with the past. See Hrant Dink, “The ‘Turk’ of the Armenian” in Agos, Jan. 23, 2004. The fact that he was the only one who was sentenced for having insulted Turkishness as against all the other accused intellectuals who were ethnic Turks and that the court had not even accepted reports by experts that the article did not contain any insult to Turkishness revealed not least the unequal treatment of his case because of his ethnic affiliation. Dink expressed his deep disappointment about this blatant discrimination in one of his last articles, “Nicin Hedef Secildim (Why I have become a target)” in Agos, Jan. 10, 2007.

22) This neglect of Gocek, however, changed considerably with time. As the son of Hrant Dink, Arat Dink, and a key member of Agos, Sarkis Seropyan, were convicted of having insulted Turkishness a few months later, Gocek strongly criticized the “blatant discrimination of Armenians in Turkey based on prejudice.” See Gocek, “On the recent convictions of Serkis Seropyan and Arat Dink” online at www.cilicia.com/2007/10/hrant-dinks-son-convicted-of-same.html. For this considerable change, compare also the following footnote.

23) Another problematic aspect of the reconciliation plea —besides the timing of the making of a case for the socio-psychology of the Turkish society—is the construction of Dink as someone having “resisted his exercise of freedom of speech” to use the term “genocide” as if he had done this under no constraints and by his own ultimate free will, thereby grossly neglecting the following actual situation. At the time of Dink’s death—and hence at the time of the reconciliation plea of Gocek—there was a new trial running against Dink of having insulted Turkishness on the basis of Article 301. This time, the alleged delict of insult was exactly his actual use of the term “genocide” in an interview for Reuters Agency on July 14, 2006. From this perspective, arguing on the basis of the previous trial and stressing that Dink “ultimately was not tried and sentenced for the use of the term” is a shortened account of the actual situation, if not outright cynical. For, as already said above, Dink was at the time of the reconciliation plea and his death on trial for using that very term and did not even have the chance to utter “genocide” a second time, since he did not survive the first time. I thank Bilgin Ayata for putting my attention on the point of a second chance. See “Retrospective on Trials against Dink” in Bianet online at www.bianet.org/bianet/kategori/english/90480/retrospective-on-trials-against-hrant-dink.

24) Derya Sazak, “Sevda guvercini (Love pigeon)” in Milliyet, Jan. 21, 2007.

25) See also Erbal, Ayda. “We are all Oxymorons,” The Armenian Weekly, April 24, 2007 who criticized one particular implication of such an approach, namely, if it is less worrisome when an Armenian who does not care so much about Turkey is murdered.

26) http://hurarsiv.hurriyet.com.tr/goster/haber.aspx?id=5806412&tarih=2007-01–19.

27) See, for example, Murat Yetkin, “Korkunc ve karanlik bir cinayet (A Frightening and obscure Murder),” Jan. 20, 2007.

28) Guneri Civaoglu, “Rezillik (Infamousness)” in Milliyet, Jan. 20, 2007.

29) Guneri Civaoglu, “Kan Kulturu (Blood Culture)” in Milliyet, Jan. 21, 2007. Can Dundar, one of the leading figures of the Turkish left and a good friend of Dink himself, also revived the talk about the ASALA. See “Hepimiz Ermeni miyiz? (Are we all Armenians?)” in Milliyet, Jan. 30, 2007.

30) See Rifat N. Bali, 2006. Ermeni Kiyiminin 50. Yildonumunun Yansimalari. Toplumsal Tarih 159 (March 2007).

31) See, for example, the following passage in “Bir Cinayet” in Cumhuriyet, Jan. 30, 1973: “Bu tur cinayetler dunya kamuoyunda tiksinti yaratir. En buyuk tiksintiyi, en buyuk aciyi da Ermeni yurttaslarimiz duyacaklardir. Belki hepimizden daha cok. (Such murderers disgust the international public. However, the most disgust and the greatest pain will most likely be felt by our fellow Armenian citizens).”

32) See Seyhan Bayraktar, “Der Massenmord an den Armeniern 1915/16 im Spiegel der turkischen Presse (The Mass Murder of the Armeniens of 1915/16 as presented in the Turkish media)” in Ideologien zwischen Luge und Wahrheitsanspruch (Ideologies, Lies and Authenticism), edited by S. Greschonig and C. Sing (Wiesbaden: DUV, 2004).

33) See Bayraktar, “Master Narratives of the Armenian Question in Turkish Public Discourse,” paper read at “Ideologies of Revolution, Nation, and Empire: Political Ideas, Parties, and Practices at the End of the Ottoman Empire 1878–1922,” in Salzburg.

34) See Ayda Erbal (2007). Bir Cinayet” in Cumhuriyet, Jan. 30, 1973: “Bu tur cinayetler dunya kamuoyunda tiksinti yaratir. En buyuk tiksintiyi, en buyuk aciyi da Ermeni yurttaslarimiz duyacaklardir. Belki hepimizden daha cok. (Such murderers disgust the international public. However, the most disgust and the greatest pain will most likely be felt by our fellow Armenian citizens).”