A highly popular online Turkish video, posted on the video sharing service YouTube last week, praising the assassination of Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, illustrates the type of dangerous and hate-filled environment that Patriarch Mutafyan will return to after his orchestrated visit to the United States, the Armenian National Committee of America said. The video, which was originally taken down from YouTube but which has resurfaced in a number of different forms and has been viewed by hundreds of thousands in Turkey, depicts images of the Dink's killing with a lyric refrain, "If a person betrays the country, he is finished off." It goes on to show "patriotic" photos of confessed assassin Ogan Samast glorified in front of the Turkish flag. Video lyrics also include the chilling warning: "The only good Armenian or Kurd is a dead Armenian or Kurd." Similar video of Turkish police proudly posing with Samast shortly following his January incarceration for the murder was leaked to Turkish press and made headlines worldwide.

Turkish Armenian newspaper editor Hrant Dink was gunned down in broad daylight on January 19th in front of his Istanbul Agos newspaper office. Dink had been prosecuted multiple times under Turkey's repressive "Article 301" laws, which criminalize reference to the Armenian Genocide for "insulting Turkishness." Since his murder, Turkey's writers and historians, including Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk, Taner Akcam and Elif Shafak who have spoken honestly about this crime against humanity, have been the target of death threats.