Editorials
Akh parig, Hrant
Ten years to the date, I was at a candlelight vigil in London, co-hosted by SOAS university’s Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish Societies in remembrance of Hrant Dink. Before the sun set and the crowds arrived, I stood beside my friends and held up two letters: R-A.
In a line, we wrote, Buradayiz, ahparig. “We are here, little brother.” The first word in Turkish, the second in Armenian (from akhpar/akhper), had become a chant — a way for the Turkish populace to show deference to the memory of the man who stood when others ran.
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Beautiful <3
Hrant’s voice and legacy endure through the words of those, like Lilly, who refuse to forget.
I think you were spot on and right on point when you said it was the state that loaded and handed the gun to the killer, Ogün Samast a 17-year-old Turkish nationalist, who murdered Hrant Dink in broad daylight and at point blank range right outside his office on January 19th 2007. Two years prior to his assassination in 2005 when genocide denier Erdogan was prime minister the Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code was enacted into law which made it illegal to insult Turkey, the Turkish nation, or Turkish government institutions. This ad-hoc law was used to prosecute journalists, intellectuals, academics, and publishers for questioning sensitive issues, among them the Armenian Genocide. This law practically gave Hrant’s killers the green light to silence him for good. All this man wanted to do was to start a peaceful dialogue between the two nations because he believed only they and through dialogue can address and resolve this issue. Hrant’s murder further proved the legitimacy and historically accurate accounts of the Armenian Genocide the Turks had worked so hard to conceal and that mostly through threats and blackmails of and against individuals and states who dared to challenge Turkey’s fabricated and false narratives.
Interestingly in 2011 a few years before becoming president, the same Armenian Genocide denier Erdogan admitted and apologized for the 1937-1938 Dersim (renamed Tunceli) massacres of the Alawites they had swept under the rung and have been denying all along. But as it turned out, Erdogan (AKP) was aiming for presidency and this was a political move on his behalf to denigrate rival republican (CHP) candidate calling them out for the massacres since at the time Turkey was a single political party state led by CHP and this way Erdogan could discredit their candidate and get the votes!