Turkey: Journalist’s Death Puts Focus on Nationalism

The murder of a prominent and outspoken ethnic Armenian journalist has sent shock waves throughout Turkey, raising questions about whether a recent nationalist upsurge has taken a violent turn. The killing threatens to pose a serious challenge to the government's already embattled democratization and political reform efforts.

The journalist, Hrant Dink, was the editor of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly newspaper Agos and a vocal critic of Turkey's treatment of its religious minorities and of its policy of rejecting claims that the mass killing of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in 1915 was genocide.

Dink was put on trial several times for "insulting" Turkish identity with his writings; in 2005 he was convicted in one of the cases and handed a suspended six-month prison sentence.

The editor was shot three times in broad daylight near the entrance to the newspaper's offices in Istanbul on January 19. A teenage suspect from the Black Sea city of Trabzon, Ogun Samast, has confessed to the shooting, police have announced. Samast is not known to have links to any militant organizations, according to officials.

"Those who created nationalist sentiment in Turkey have fed such a monster that there are many youngsters on the streets who do not find the ... state nationalist enough and are ready to take the law into their own hands," columnist Ismet Berkan wrote on January 20 in Radikal, one of Turkey's main dailies, about the murder.

The last few years have seen Turkey engaged in a deep internal struggle. On the one hand, the country's drive towards European Union membership has resulted in significant political reforms, particularly regarding democratization and human rights, and the freeing up of the debate on what had previously been taboo subjects, such as the 1915 killing of ethnic Armenians.

On the other hand, the EU-related reforms have been met with a strong nationalist backlash. Nationalist lawyers and prosecutors, for example, have been able to use a law, known as article 301, to charge writers and journalists like Dink and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate Orhan Pamuk with the crime of insulting the state as a way of stifling the emerging debates and putting the brakes on Turkey's EU bid.

"In a sense, both sides have been sharpening their axes, thinking that the EU question is the final intellectual battle in Turkey," said Ali Carkoglu, a professor of political science at Istanbul's Sabanci University. "It touches on everything that is salient in Turkish politics: the Islam vs. secularism debate, democratization and the extent to which individual human rights are to be protected."

"These [anti-EU] groups seem to have nothing more than the argument that some views are bad and should not be voiced," he added.

For many Turks, the killing of Dink harkens back to the turbulent 1970's and 1980's, when journalists and intellectuals were frequently the victims of ideologically inspired violence. Although Turkey has moved forward, some wonder whether Dink's murder is an indication that the political gains made over the last few years have yet to be consolidated.

"By Turkish standards, [Dink] was playing in a way that the nationalists were not used to. In a way, he took too many risks, he underestimated his opponents," said Rifat Bali, an independent Istanbul-based researcher who studies Turkey's minority communities. "The message of the murder is