One funeral, one hundred thousand Hrants
Posted admin on January 19th, 2008 | Filed under Articles | Comments Off
Rober Koptas
On this day of farewell, Istanbul walked behind Hrant with tears in her eyes
Almost out of spite to the darkness enveloping us within, it is a bright and sunny morning. The ferry setting out from Kadikoy follows its usual route saluting the Maiden Tower. We are trying to keep our minds weary from the huge blow received busy by people watching.
This time we find ourselves trying to guesses which of these passengers are headed in the same direction with us, to send Hrant Dink off. Definitely not this youngster reading the magazine extra of the newspaper in his hand; probably that couple reading the lines under Hrant’s picture in the Radikal newspaper snuggled together; also maybe this man with the sorrowful look in his dark eyes; and others sipping their teas and coffees and having a smoke? Who knows…
We take the Befliktafl-Harbiye fillup taxicab to Valikona¤›. The usual rush, din and turmoil are gone with the banning of the vehicle traffic. We walk in unhurried steps; we are in no rush anyway. We are amazed at the playfulness of the sun since we expect the weather to be, in the words of one poet, to be “as heavy as a bullet.” Hrant must have loved the perfect weather, but our hearts cannot help “but wail away loud and clear.” And if it weren’t, to top it all, for this
woman from the textile factory who from afar accompanied the “duduk” playing the tune of “Sari Gyalin” with her singing… Read the rest of this entry »
Hrant
Posted admin on January 19th, 2008 | Filed under Articles | Comments Off
Etyen Mahcupyan
The day before yesterday, January 19, 2007, the day I lost my heart…. I don’t remember how we met. The funny thing is, neither did Hrant. I have no sense of what we felt or thought of each other during that first encounter.
Neither were we able to recover any traces of those first impressions when, much later, we strained ourselves to return to whatever was happening ten years earlier. It was as if we shared a bond that had grown so instantaneously dense as to erase the past altogether. We lived and enjoyed our friendship as a boon that had somehow been “given” to us. On various trips or otherwise in friendly company, when people remarked on how close our relationship was despite the obvious contrast between our personalities, Hrant would take great pleasure in interrupting the conversation to announce: “He is my mind, whereas I am his heart.”
So it is that yesterday, I lost my heart…. Not only people who knew Hrant but even those who might have seen him only once on television would have noticed just how big that heart was. And if today our hearts are unable to bear his departure, it is because his heart was so deep as to embrace us all. Hrant’s strength lay in being able to unite this great heart that he had with his leadership qualities, his courage and his integrity. But what really made Hrant himself was his utter sincerity, which was always surprising, but with which many felt uneasy. Read the rest of this entry »
1915-2007
Posted admin on January 19th, 2008 | Filed under Articles | Comments Off
Ahmet Altan
Nothing much has changed it seems. They were murdered in 1915 as well… They are being murdered in 2007 too… What was being said about that massacre at the beginning of last century. “They killed us, and we killed them back.”
What are we going to say about the murder of Hrant then? That “Hrant killed us, and we killed Hrant back?” Now that is not what we say, is it?
We say “traitors killed Hrant.”
We do not see the murderers of Hrant as one of “us.” Why is it that “we” are the ones who ninety years ago killed hundreds of thousands of people, without forsaking children, women, elderly and babies, who decimated the Armenians, but we are not the ones who killed Hrant?
What is the difference between the two? Read the rest of this entry »
My dear Şapparig…
Posted admin on January 19th, 2008 | Filed under Articles | Comments Off
Aydin Engin
Why, are you surprised to hear me call you “fiapparig”? How come? Aren’t you Rakel’s Çutak, aren’t you your granddaughter Nora’s Tutak, the Ahbarik of your Armenian friends, and our
şapparig? Ah my dear şapparig, (…) Right now, as these sentences are written, in the tiny office
of AGOS, in rooms we barely fit in, we light one cigarette after another. What’s more, we keep laying the writing aside. Well…
I don’t know if it’s that we’ve got a cold or what, tears keep flowing from our eyes. Which means we have to keep wiping our glasses… We’re working on this week’s AGOS, you see.
Don’t worry, fiapparig, it’s going to be a fine paper, we are working hard at getting together an AGOS as good as you would have liked, the way you would have wanted it.
Of course, there are difficulties. No, no, don’t worry. When I say difficulties, I mean we are overwhelmed by the offers of “support” flooding in… Newspapers who ignored the existence of AGOS, or even printed series of negative articles and comments about you, and an incredible number of colleagues, from young media workers to renowned journalists are all asking, “What can I do for AGOS?.” Some arrive without notice, and say, “I’ll work in the tea room, I’ll read proofs, if an article is required, I’ll write that, too, if not, I’ll sell AGOS out in the street.” We hardly fit in the rooms anyway. Now we feel suffocated by people coming in for support. Besides, speaking to people who have come to help, most of us find ourselves frequently wiping our glasses again.
In other words, fiapparig, we are under enormous strain.
Read the rest of this entry »
How could you do this, Hrant!
Posted admin on January 19th, 2008 | Filed under Articles | Comments Off
Baskin Oran
I think it was the year 1993, I was at the university. The phone rang. The caller said “My name is Frat Dink. In your article this week you wrote about the injustices done to us Armenians. You made me very happy.
God bless you!” and he started to cry. I was distraught. My world fell apart. I was so shaken that later I could not remember how I answered him.
This was how I met Hrant. Later, when we went to Istanbul he invited us over to dinner. It was a veritable feast. We could not stop complimenting Rakel for her cooking skills.
That voice which first gave me not his real name but the one on his identification papers, later took on the task of setting up Agos. He wanted me to work with him. At the time the weekly journal I worked for was publishing every article I wrote, never turning any down. “I cannot leave them since they are treating me fairly, but I am going to write an article for your first issue” I promised. Read the rest of this entry »
Hrant Dink between the fire and the sword
Posted admin on January 19th, 2008 | Filed under Articles | Comments Off
ARAS Publishing
Hrant Dink was a man of feeling and passion from head to toe. What spilled from his lips, what poured out from his pen was what he believed in, what he felt in his heart, honest, unequivocal. It was this characteristic of his that made him a dangerous man, a “khent,” a mad man, an unpredictable son of man in the eyes of other mortals trapped in their armours of clichés. In our realm of phoniness, his only trump card was his sincerity; yet, this very sincerity was also his sole flaw like the heel of the mythological hero, Achilles. His soul was shaped by the way of life based on solidarity in the Gedikpasa Protestant Orphanage, in Tbrevank, in the Tuzla Armenian Children’s Camp that moulded his spirit.
It was the youth movements of the 1970s and his dynamism that unleashed his soul into flames as ardent as those his name denoted. The driving force behind his struggle was his revolt against the suffering his people went through in the past and the injustice of the moment he was living through. Read the rest of this entry »
Farewell Hrant…
Posted admin on January 19th, 2008 | Filed under Articles | Comments Off
Ali Bayramoglu
I feel a deep pang of sadness…
The grief does not subside, but escalates by the moment.
Neither the political statements, nor the enormous legacy he has left behind; neither the social and political mobilization his death has brought about, nor the place he had achieved among the Armenians around the world; nothing consoles…
For his friends, a world without Hrant will always be incomplete.
That great heart will not beat, that affectionate gaze, smile and hug will not warm the hearts and make the world brighter….
For everyone, a Turkey without Hrant will be incomplete.
That brave voice which united his Armenian and Turkish identities to conduct politics in Turkey and for Turkey will no longer be heard and there will be none other like it.
We committed the most despicable murder ever on these lands…
The most courageous man of the country, the purest Anatolian lad to the core we shot from his back, his neck, without daring to challenge him upfront face to face…
How shameful; we ought to be ashamed… Read the rest of this entry »
What shall we do ?
Posted admin on January 19th, 2008 | Filed under Articles | Comments Off
Arat Dink
Someone threw a stick for someone who was brainwashed and he promptly ran to fetch that stick. Is our business now with this brainless person?
Is our business with those who throw the stick, the ignoble who throw the stick to those who throw the stick?
Our people now cry for vengeance. It is hard, my dear ones, to be a man where there are cries for vengeance.
It is as difficult to remain human where there are cries for vengeance.
Is this not what our father also did? Did he not succeed in living as a man and as a human being in places where the clarion call for vengeance rang?
Is this not why the whole world now bids Him farewell? Read the rest of this entry »
the spiritual unease of a pigeon
Posted admin on January 19th, 2008 | Filed under his Articles | Comments Off
I did not at first feel troubled about the investigation that was filed against me by the Şişli public prosecutor’s office with the accusation of “insulting Turkishness”. After all, it was not the first time to face this charge. I had been familiar with the accusation because of a similar lawsuit filed against me in Urfa. Over the last three years, I was being tried in Urfa for “denigrating Turkishness” on the grounds of having stated in a talk I gave at a conference there in 2002 that “I was not a Turk … but from Turkey and an Armenian.”
I was unaware about how this lawsuit was proceeding. I was not at all interested. My lawyer friends in Urfa were attending the hearings in my absence.
I was even quite nonchalant when I went and gave my deposition to the Şişli public prosecutor. I ultimately had complete trust in what my intentions had been and what I had written. Once the prosecutor had the chance to evaluate not just that single sentence from my editorial - which made no sense by itself - but the text as a whole, he would understand easily that I had no intention of “denigrating Turkishness”; and this comedy would come to an end.
I was certain that a lawsuit would not be filed at the end of the investigation. I was sure of myself. But, surprise! A lawsuit was filed.
But I still did not lose my optimism. Read the rest of this entry »
He was brave, emotional, and indomitable
Posted admin on January 19th, 2008 | Filed under Articles | Comments Off
Mesrob II, Armenian Patriarch of Istanbul & all Turkey
My beloved community in mourning, and my dear friends,
Today in this historical building, the Holy Mother of God Patriarchal Church, we are gathered to commit to eternity the late Hrant Dink, publisher of Agos newspaper, and a beloved son of our community, who was a victim of an accursed assassination.
The life story of the dear departed that began in Malatya has come today to its end. The life that experienced adversities and struggles made Hrant Dink a courageous, passionate, and bold character. This is how he became the defender and Standard bearer for justice, freedom of conscience, and human rights. Whatever the cost, he said what he believed and what he thought; if he thought something needed to be done, he did it. Read the rest of this entry »