Murder of outspoken journalist tests Turkey's democratic gains
The murder Friday of a prominent and outspoken Armenian journalist has sent shock waves throughout Turkey and raised questions about whether a recent nationalist upsurge in the country has taken a violent turn. It also presents the government with what many say is a serious challenge to its already embattled democratization and reform efforts.
The journalist, Hrant Dink, was a vocal critic of Turkey's treatment of its religious minorities and had been particularly outspoken against the government's policy of rejecting claims that the mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in 1915 was genocide. He was shot in broad daylight just outside the offices of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, where he served as editor.
"A bullet has been fired at democracy and freedom of expression. I condemn the traitorous hands behind this disgraceful murder," Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on television soon after Mr. Dink was murdered. "This was an attack on our peace and stability."
The past few years have seen Turkey engaged in a deep internal struggle. On the one hand, the country's drive toward European Union (EU) membership has resulted in significant political reforms, particularly regarding democratization and human rights, and the freeing up of the debate on what had previously been taboo subjects, such as the Armenian question.
On the other hand, the EU-related reforms have been met with a strong nationalist backlash.
Nationalist lawyers and prosecutors, for example, have been able to use a law, known as Article 301, to charge writers and journalists like Dink and Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk with the crime of insulting Turkish identity as a way of stifling the emerging debates and putting the brakes on Turkey's EU bid.
Dink was tried under this article, and in 2005 was convicted and handed a suspended six-month prison sentence.
"In a sense, both sides have been sharpening their axes, thinking that the EU question is the final intellectual battle in Turkey," says Ali Carkoglu, a professor of political science at Istanbul's Sabanci University. "It touches on everything that is salient in Turkish politics: the Islam versus secularism debate, democratization, and the extent to which individual human rights are to be protected."
For many Turks, the killing of Dink harks back to the turbulent '70s and '80s, when journalists and intellectuals were frequently the victims of ideologically inspired violence. Although Turkey has moved forward, some wonder whether Dink's murder is an indication that the political gains made over the past few years have yet to be consolidated.
"In a way, he took too many risks, he underestimated his opponents," says Rifat Bali, an Istanbul-based researcher who studies Turkey's minority communities. "Some of the ultranationalist core of Turkey has not changed. It is a militant core that is ready, if necessary, to murder its ideological opponents," he says.
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