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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
January 28, 2007
Murder 301
Hrant Dink, a Christian Turk of Armenian extraction, was the editor of Agos, a prominent weekly in Istanbul. He campaigned fearlessly for recognition in Turkey of historical facts surrounding the forced expulsions and massacres of Armenians in 1915-17, when the “Young Turks” governed the collapsing Ottoman Empire. He also campaigned for Turkish-Armenian reconciliation, thus earning the enmity of the radicals on both sides. And he campaigned for open democracy.Last year, he was tried and convicted under article 301 of the Turkish penal code, for “insulting Turkishness”. It is an article that has been used repeatedly to silence discussion of the Armenian holocaust. He wrote in his newspaper of the pain he felt, at being taken as an enemy of his own country. Also of the pain of receiving constant death threats, and having to behave like a pigeon, “always alert, looking right, left, in front, behind”. Hrant was gunned down on January 19th. Ogün Samast, a 17-year-old high school dropout, has confessed the murder, declaring that Hrant had “dirtied Turkish blood”. Turkish police have made several further arrests, for the boy was obviously not acting entirely on his own. From an account of the funeral, by an eyewitness in Istanbul: “It started with a memorial service in the street in front of the Agos offices. His widow gave a passionate speech, written in the form of a letter to her husband. Speaking of the killer, she wrote, ‘We know he was once a baby. Without questioning the darkness that can turn a baby into a killer, nothing will change.’ She also quoted John 15:13, ‘No one can have greater love than to lay down his life for his friends.’ In spite of being surrounded by tens of thousands of people, during much of the service, a white dove stayed on top of the black vehicle which held Hrant's coffin.” This last is the sort of detail journalists instinctively delete from copy, since it will be disputed no matter how many witnesses there were. (The dove was one of many released at the funeral.) But the fact that, according to Turkish press, as many as 100,000 walked the eight-kilometre route of the procession, is itself remarkable. And the fact that many chanted, “We are all Armenians!” in Turkish, when they were mostly Turks, must serve to remind my reader that no country can be painted in one colour. The Columbia Journalism Review has described Turkish penal code 301 as “a law that stinks of suppression of speech”. For once I agree with the CJR. And yet, before we think, smugly, that we do not have such laws in the West, we must look at the whole tendency of “political correctness”, which is to stink in like manner. Everywhere I can see, we are losing the finest achievement of liberalism. Not of “gliberalism”, as I call it -- the degenerate child of liberalism, which embraces its forms and denies its content -- but of the fine tradition itself, of opening rat’s nests of state and clerical privilege, and exposing human claims to free enquiry. True liberalism originated in the impulse to tell the truth, and in so doing, “vindicate the ways of God to man”. Free speech in all its forms, including freedom of the press, airwaves, and web, is something beyond law that goes into the dye and fabric of a society. It is not licence, and it dies when it becomes licentious. It exists, while it survives, for a purpose -- “that we may know the truth, and the truth will set us free”. Free speech exists so that the truth may be defended; and so that ugly lies, dressed up as pretty platitudes and plausibilities, can be exposed and destroyed. Hrant was a true hero of journalism -- though few of his licentious colleagues around the world will ever remember his name, or care for his mission. The massacre of around 1.5 million Armenians is not something that will ever stay swept under a Turkish carpet. Its denial by Turkish nationalists and Muslim chauvinists can serve no honest cause. Lies serve only lies. Yet freedom is indivisible. Hrant had last made news in October, when he attacked a French parliamentary bill, that would have made denial of the Armenian holocaust a criminal offence. He called this the flip side of the coin, and said, “Those who restrict freedom of expression in Turkey and those who try to restrict it in France are of the same mentality.” David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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