Dear readers,
Hrant Dink, a Turkish author and journalist of Armenian descent, was assassinated on Friday in Istanbul. Turkish police, obviously under heavy pressure both internally from the government and externally from Western countries, quickly caught the murderer, a young nationalist, with the murder weapon. He immediately confessed (if one can call confession its totally remorseless admission of it) and is still in custody. Everyone suspects he wasn't alone and got at least some support from Turkish extreme-right or nationalist groups. Let's hope that he will be punished like he deserved and that those who actually organised the murder go to jail for a very long time too.
But posting about what has been in the news for days is not really my point. I just wanted to remind German and French "ayatollahs" of History that Hrant Dink was the same guy who both openly accused Turkey of genocide against the Armenians in 1915 and vehemently opposed any criminalisation of negating this genocide. I wanted to praise again such an intellectual honesty, such a courage and eventually such a strong mind. A mind which is powerful enough not only to defend an idea publicly but also to actively support the fact that someone has the right to defend a completely contradictory idea, as despicable to us as this idea might be. Hrant Dink was killed by a kid because he was speaking his mind. Our German and French legislators are killing his spirit again and again... Shame on them.
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