Journalist gets a fond, emotional memorial

Tears flowed from the eyes of both Turkish and Armenian audience members at a crowded commemoration held at UCLA Sunday afternoon to remember the death of journalist Hrant Dink.

Dink, the editor in chief of Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, was murdered in front of his office on Jan. 19 by teenager Ogun Samsast. Samsast’s motives for the murder remain unclear, but according to Hurriyet, a daily Turkish newspaper, Samsast was ordered to kill Dink by militant nationalist Yasin Hayal.

In the last two years of Dink’s life, he received numerous death threats for speaking about the Armenian genocide. The Turkish government denies the deaths constitute genocide because it maintains they resulted from the effects of World War I and not an extermination of the Armenians.

Dink was convicted for denigrating the Turkish government under article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code. The article allows journalists to be prosecuted for any perceived criticism of the Turkish government, according to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

Many speakers at the event shared fond memories of Dink. One speaker was Zeynep Turkyilmaz, a UCLA doctoral student in history and a member of the informal student group Initiative of Turkish Students to Commemorate “Our Hrant.”

Turkyilmaz said she met Dink 11 years ago in Turkey. She said as a Turkish undergraduate student doing a project on Armenian literature, she was met by opposition in the course of her research, but Dink encouraged the Armenian-Turkish relationship and supported the project.

“He was very excited … and he sent a reporter from Agos to cover (the presentation on Armenian literature). I was in one of the first issues (of the newspaper),” recalled Turkyilmaz.

Turkyilmaz urged the audience to remember the challenges Dink went through in his lifetime and to help Dink’s newspaper Agos endure.

“My last memories o