The New York Times: Dink's Assassination Leads to Conciliation Between Armenia and Turkey

PanARMENIAN.Net - The killing of an Armenian-Turkish editor Hrant Dink in Istanbul last week and the sorrow it has generated within Turkey are leading to rare conciliatory gestures between Turkey and Armenia, historic enemies, and to calls for changes in laws here defending Turkish identity, The New York Times writes. Hrant Dink like many other intellectuals has been sentenced to 6 month imprisonment for insulting Turkishness under 301 article of Turkish Criminal Code, underlines The New York Times. The magazine reports that Bulent Arinc, the parliamentary chairman from the ruling Justice and Development Party said he would back efforts to abolish the measure under which Mr. Dink was prosecuted. "It can be discussed to totally abolish or completely revise the Article 301," Mr. Arinc said, adding that members of Parliament "are open to this."



Despite the fact that the Armenian-Turkish border has been sealed since 1993 and diplomatic relations severed, Armenia is sending a deputy foreign minister, Arman Kirakossian, to the funeral, and the archbishop of the Armenian Church of America, Khajag Barsamian, also accepted the government's invitation to the ceremony. High-level Turkish government officials are expected to attend the funeral.



Norman Stone, professor of history at Koc University in Istanbul, said Mr. Dink was killed at a time when Turkey was reacting to pressure to respond to the Armenian issue. Most Armenian Turks live in Istanbul, the diverse and cosmopolitan center of Turkey. But the anti-nationalist demonstrations that followed Mr. Dink's killing also surfaced in Izmir, Sanliurfa and Hatay.



"Public opinion in both countries, weary of the years-long conflict, had reached a point of explosion," said Kaan Soyak, a director of the Turkish-Armenian Business Development Commission, the only bilateral trade council of Turkish and Armenian executives. "That's what lies behind the massive outpouring for Mr. Dink." But many here still blame Article 301 for Mr. Dink's death and see it as an obstacle to freedom of speech in Turkey, The New York Times reports.