Hrant Dink Killing as if Continuation of Armenian Genocide

January 22, 2007

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ “On behalf of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), I send condolences to all those who have lost a very decent and constructive human being in their lives with the death of Hrant Dink in Istanbul, and I also express outrage at this greatest of all sins of the taking of a human being's life by murder,” says the statement received by PanARMENIAN.Net from Prof. Israel W. Charny, Ph.D., the President, International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) and Prof. Steven Leonard Jacobs.

“The symbolic meanings of the killing of Hrant Dink are clear. This murder is as if a continuation of the Armenian Genocide insofar as it was the murder of another Armenian in Turkey, because he was an Armenian and, as a suspected murderer was overheard saying, "an infidel." The murder also extends the prevailing cultural climate in Turkey of denial of the Armenian Genocide, and the prevailing infamous Law 301 which makes it a crime to speak of the Armenian Genocide as if this constitutes an injury to "Turkishness" and a betrayal of the Turkish nation and people.

Hrant Dink was both a loyal member of his Armenian people and a loyal citizen of his Turkish nation. He strove for reconciliation of the two peoples and he wanted his nation to be accepted as a member of the European Community. We hope that the tragedy of his murder will lead to prompt condemnation by Turkish society and to police and legal steps to convict his murderers. But we also hope that this ugly murder will have a stunning effect on decent Turkish society, which will lead it to abolish Law 301, and to acknowledge the history of genocide of non-Moslem peoples, including the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks, during the period of 1915-1922.

The current leaders of Turkey are not responsible for the genocide, but they are responsible for maintaining a culture of denial that reaches absurd proportions such as where leading Turkish figures claim that the writings of American diplomats (such as Ambassador Morgenthau), British leaders and historians (like Lord Bryce and Arnold Toynbee), or even the courtmartials by the Turkish military itself of the perpetrators of the genocide are, one after another, declared forgeries.

We hope that the tragedy of the murder of Hrant Dink will lead to major steps by Turkey towards free speech, democracy and historical credibility which will constitute Turkey herself joining the real meanings of European civilization, and surely political recognition of Turkey as a welcome participant in European civilization will follow,” the statement says.