Tens of thousands mourn ethnic-Armenian editor

ISTANBUL -- Tens of thousands of mourners wound through the heart of this ancient city yesterday in the funeral procession for an ethnic-Armenian journalist whose killing triggered soul searching over national identity, freedom of expression, and the historical ghosts that shadow Turkey.

Followed by the largely silent throng, a black hearse slowly bore the flower-strewn coffin of editor Hrant Dink to an Armenian Orthodox church, where he was eulogized as a voice of courage and conscience. A teenage nationalist reportedly has confessed to gunning down the 52-year-old journalist Jan. 19 outside his office.

The extraordinary display of public mourning 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 efforts to win 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 blames the 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 provision known as Article 301, which contains a wide-ranging ban on "insulting Turkishness." Any public reference to an Armenian genocide, even in carefully couched language, can result in being hauled into court and possibly 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 Turks who believe their country has been unfairly tarred with genocide allegations, the violent backlash by right-wing nationalists has prompted profound unease. Many were disturbed by the young age of the alleged killer, identified by authorities as 17-year-old Ogun Samast, and the fact that he had apparently come under the sway of nationalist militants.

A mood of quiet desolation pervaded the day's events. Loudspeakers played a mournful folk song. At the site of the slaying, his supporters released white doves.

"I feel like I lost a brother," said Zeynep Catik, a 55-year-old housewife who joined the funeral procession. "Turkey lost one of its core values."

The Armenian patriarch, Mesrob II, addressed the mourners, urging that the 60,000 Armenians living in Turkey be accepted as an integral part of society.

"We still hope that [Turks] . . . will accept that the Armenians are Turkish citizens who have been living in this land for thousands of years, and are not foreigners or potential foes," he said.