Turkish-Armenian writer assassinated
19 January 2007 - SACC
A prominent Turkish-Armenian editor, convicted in 2005 of insulting Turkish identity, has been shot dead outside his newspaper's office in Istanbul.
Dink was convicted more than a year ago of insulting Turkish identity after he wrote an article which addressed the mass killings of Ottoman Armenians nine decades ago. in one of his last newspaper columns, he admitted he had been getting deaths threats.
His computer hard drive was full of them, he wrote, amounting to what he called psychological torture.
Dink was among dozens of writers in Turkey who have been charged under 301 of Turkey's penal code with insulting Turkish identity, often for articles dealing with the killing of Kurds and Ottoman Armenians.
Hundreds of thousands of Armenians died in 1915 at the hands of Ottoman Turks. Armenians have campaigned for the killings to be recognised internationally as genocide - and some countries have done so.
Turkey admits that many Armenians were killed but it denies any genocide, saying the deaths were a part of World War I. Turkey and neighbouring Armenia still have no official relations.
