TURKEY: Turkish Prime Minister deplores murder of Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink shot in broad daylight outside his Istanbul office

Turkish Prime Minister deplores murder of Turkish-Armenian editor shot in broad daylight outside his Istanbul office. A high-profile Turkish-Armenian editor, convicted of insulting Turkey's identity, was shot dead outside his newspaper office in Istanbul on Friday (January 19). Hrant Dink, a frequent target of nationalist anger for his comments on the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War One, was shot as he left his weekly newspaper Agos around 1300 GMT in central Istanbul. At a hastily called news conference in Ankara, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan denounced the shooting and said two people had been detained in connection with the murder. "Unfortunately, dark hands have chosen Hrant Dink this time to achieve their felonious purposes. It is very meaningful that this murder happened when especially in some countries where the Armenian genocide is at the top of the agenda." The attack is bound to raise political tensions in would-be EU member Turkey, where politicians of all parties have been courting the nationalist vote ahead of presidential elections in May and parliamentary polls due by November. News reports said Dink had been shot three times in the head and neck. Witnesses said the assailant looked about 20, wore jeans and a cap and shouted "I shot the non-Muslim" as he left the scene. "A young man with a white coat was running away towards that direction. There was only one person running, " said one unidentified man. Protesters outside the Agos newspaper office where Dink was the editor chanted "the murderer government will pay" and "shoulder-to-shoulder against fascism". Television footage showed Dink's body lying in the street covered by a white sheet, with hundreds of bystanders gathering behind a police cordon. Last year Turkey's appeals court upheld a six-month suspended jail sentence against Dink for referring in an article to an Armenian nationalist idea of ethnic purity without Turkish blood. The court said the comments went against article 301 of Turkey's revised penal code, which lets prosecutors pursue cases against writers and scholars for "insulting Turkish identity". The ruling was sharply criticised by the EU.

ITN Source | January 20, 2007

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