Page update: 25.01.07
Ogun Samast, a seventeen-year-old Turkish youth, has confessed to the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink (53). Ogun Samast was identified by his father from CCTV footage. He killed Hrant Dink with a shotgun outside his Sisli (Istanbul) office on Friday 19th January 2007.
Between 1915 and 1917, during the final days of the Ottoman Empire, Turkish forces were responsible for the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians. As Christians, the Armenians were viewed as infidels by the tribal Muslim majority. The genocide was an organised campaign of state-sponsored ethnic cleansing and mass extermination.
The current Turkish government is trying to hush up this war crime as it attempts to qualify for entry to The European Union. Genocide denial is a mainline political policy in modern Turkey. Hrant Dink challenged this in Agos, the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly newspaper which he edited. In Turkey it is against the law to talk openly about The Armenian Genocide.
In his last newspaper column before his death, Dink said that he had received numerous death threats against him. He was given no security protection by the Turkish authorities despite his complaints.
Notwithstanding public pronouncements to the contrary, the Turkish Government is privately very pleased to see Hrant Dink dead.
Because of the increasing influence of the online encyclopaedia, Wikipedia, as a source of reliable non-partisan information, it has come to the attention of the Turkish authorities. The Wikipedia page on The Armenian Genocide here has had to be locked. There are suggestions that Turkish Government disinformation agents have been making attempts to edit the emphasis of the Wikipedia page and subvert its content.
Speaking in Diyarbakir (Eastern Anatolia, Turkey) on the 21st January 2007, Sevket Kazan, the Deputy Leader of the Saadet Party of Turkey, argued that the CIA and Mossad planned and organised the murder of Hrant Dink. “Boys were used in the Trabazon and Sisli attacks and murders, but the real murderers are the CIA and Mossad …. Hrant Dink is a victim of an assassination. The priest murder in Trabazon and the Dink Murder, both were committed by boys under 18 years old... The CIA and Mossad are behind all these murders, yet they use domestic tools for the crimes. Their main aim is to destabilise Turkey." Sevket Kazan's mention of Trabazon was a back-reference to The Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoon row. On Sunday 5th February 2006, a Roman Catholic priest, Father Andrea Santoro (60) was shot in the back as he knelt to pray in his church in Trabazon (Turkey). His murderer was a sixteen-year-old boy.
Sources: The Guardian (London, UK) 20.01.07, BBC News (London, UK) 21.01.07, The Independent (London, UK) 20.01.07 and the Turkish Weekly (Ankara, Turkey) 21.01.07. See also: "Ultimate Crime, Ultimate Challenge" by Vartan Oskanian, The Zoryan Institute, Armeniapedia and Panarmenian.net.
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