ISTANBUL, Turkey — Tens of thousands of mourners joined a funeral procession today through the heart of Istanbul, paying tribute to an ethnic Armenian journalist whose murder triggered soul-searching over national identity, freedom of expression and the historical ghosts that shadow Turkey’s present.
Followed by an enormous, largely silent throng, a black hearse slowly bore the flower-strewn coffin of editor Hrant Dink to an Armenian church, where he was eulogized as a voice of courage and conscience.
A teenage nationalist has confessed to gunning down the 52-year-old journalist outside his newspaper’s office Jan. 19. The funeral shut down much of downtown Istanbul, whose narrow back alleys and wide boulevards are normally the scene of a raucous commercial free-for-all.
Onlookers, many dabbing their eyes, leaned from balconies and watched from doorways as the cortege passed by. Some applauded, in the traditional sign of respect for honored dead.
Dink, a Turkish citizen of Armenian extraction, was best known as an advocate for the rights of the country’s Armenian minority — including a dogged campaign for official recognition by Turkey that the deaths of some 1.5 million Armenians in the final years of the Ottoman Empire constituted the first genocide of the 20th century.
Turkey officially blames the Armenian deaths on fighting, cold and hunger rather than any systematic campaign of extermination, a stance that is widely viewed internationally as an obstacle to its aspirations to join the European Union.
Scores of Turkish academics, journalists and novelists, including Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, have been prosecuted under a legal provision known as Article 301, which contains a wide-ranging ban on “insulting Turkishness.” Any public reference to the Armenian genocide, even in carefully couched language, can result in being hauled into court and perhaps jailed, as Dink was.
Hours before the daylong funeral rites began, mourners gathered outside the offices of Agos, Dink’s newspaper, whose name refers to the nurturing of a seed. Many carried placards saying, “We are all Armenians” and “We are all Hrant Dink.”
Even among those who believe Turkey has been unfairly tarred with genocide allegations, the violent backlash by right-wing nationalists has prompted deep unease. Many were particularly disturbed by the young age of the reportedly self-confessed killer, a 17-year-old named Ogun Samast, and the fact that he had apparently come under the sway of nationalist militants.
In death, Dink achieved some measure of the Turkish-Armenian reconciliation he so passionately sought in life. In a highly unusual step, Turkey invited Armenia to send representatives to the funeral, even though the border between the two countries is sealed and they have no diplomatic ties.
In a sign of ambivalence, however, Turkey sent senior officials but not its top leaders to the fune
