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Turkish-Armenian editor shot dead in Istanbul |
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Written by Agencies
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Friday, 19 January 2007 11:36 |
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Controversial Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was shot by an unknown assailant as he left his newspaper Agos around 1300 GMT in central Istanbul. Dink was shot dead outside his newspaper office in Istanbul on Friday.
Last year Turkey's appeals court upheld a six-month suspended jail sentence against Dink, a Turkish-born Armenian, for referring in an article to an Armenian nationalist idea of ethnic purity without Turkish blood.
The court said the comments went against an article of Turkey's revised penal code which lets prosecutors pursue cases against writers and scholars for "insulting Turkish identity".
Dink was one of dozens of writers who have been charged under laws against insulting Turkishness, particularly over issues related to an alleged genocide of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War One.
The government has promised to revise the much criticised article of the penal code. The European Union has repeatedly called on Ankara to change the law. Dink was editor-in-chief of the bilingual Turkish and Armenian weekly Agos.
Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan has given a statement on the Hrant Dink assassination after the cabinet meeting on Friday.
Erdoğan said:
"Chief editor of Agos Newspaper Hrant Dink has become an innocent victim of an obnoxious murder on Friday afternoon. Shady forces have once more chosen our country to reach their ill desires. The bullets that shot Hrant Dink today are in fact bullets fired for the unity of our nation. I have already commissioned the minister of justice as well as the minister of internal affairs to capture the assassin. We have lived on these lands together for many centuries. No ill plot can ruin Turkey's unity. I believe Turkish and Armenian citizens have the common sense to recover from such treachery." |