It should be the primary task of the government to immediately change Article 301 of the penal code which makes it a crime to insult the Turkish national character. Dink, 52, who was shot dead last Friday outside the downtown Istanbul offices of the Agos weekly newspaper which he edited, was among many journalists, writers and academics who have been prosecuted under Article 301 for expressing their opinions.
His public statements describing the killings of Armenians during World War I by Ottoman Turks as a genocide were seen by many ultranationalist Turks as insults to the honor of Turks and as threats to national unity.
Turkey denies that the killing of Armenians during that time amounts to genocide and has prosecuted many writers, academics and historians for criticizing this stance.
Orhan Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2006 and who was tried and acquitted last year under the same law as Dink, said that those who have been defending Article 301 were responsible for Dink's death.
I totally agree with Pamuk's assertion and this is why I am appealing to the government to urgently change Article 301.
I also agree with Amnesty International's Europe and Central Asia program director Nicola Duckworth who said: “In Turkey there are still a number of harsh laws which endorse the suppression of freedom of speech. These laws, coupled with the persisting official statements by senior government, state and military officials condemning critical debate and dissenting opinion, create an atmosphere in which violent attacks can take place.”
Thus, in Turkey, on the one hand we have harsh laws that hinder freedom of expression while on the other we have senior officials making statements that sometimes may encourage violence.
Bearing this fact in mind, this latest murder once again underscores the urgency of promoting the rule of law, human rights and respect for individual rights in Turkey as an antidote to the growing danger of ultra-nationalism.
Additionally, increasing poverty in the country should also be tackled in a rational way to minimize the effects of the current social disorder; conditions that make it easy for the masterminds of violence to use young, jobless, brainwashed hitmen to easily kill intellectuals.
It is then not a coincidence that Dink's killer, a 17-year old male from the Black Sea town of Trabzon, and the 16-year-old killer of the Catholic priest Andrea Santoro in Trabzon in February last year, were jobless or had family problems.
Despite the negative atmosphere that still persists at the level of decision makers that may sometimes encourage those prone to violence, the fact that thousands of people in many cities in Turkey took to the streets to protest Dink's murder gives me hope that public awareness for widening freedom of expression will grow.
A placard carried during a protest in the southern city of Mersin read, “Hrant, do forgive us, we thought doves would not have been killed.” This emotional but meaningful slogan was in reference to one of Dink's last articles he wrote for Agos in which he likened himself to a dove and the “skittishness” of his soul as he faced the spurious prosecutions of nationalist lawyers.
But you were killed Hrant Dink, and we could not protect you like we could not protect the others.
