timeimmortal

Killed by gunman at the entrance to his newspaper’s office:

Journalist Hrant Dink, one of the most prominent voices of Turkey’s shrinking Armenian community, was murdered by a gunman Friday at the entrance to his newspaper’s offices, police said.Dink, a 53-year-old Turkish citizen of Armenian descent, had gone on trial numerous times here for speaking out about the mass killings of Armenians by Turks at the beginning of the 20th century. He had received threats from nationalists, who viewed him as a traitor.

Dink was a public figure in Turkey, and as the editor of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, one of its most prominent Armenian voices.

Turkey (then, as now, a Muslim nation) perpetrated the Armenian Genocide from 1915 to 1917, slaughtering as many as 1.5 million of the (ardently Christian) Armenian people under the pretence that they felt that the Armenians were likely to ally with Russia during the way, and so declared the Armenian people an enemy. It should be noted, as well, that Turkey — to this day — protests against any and all attempts to label the Armenian Genocide as being a genocidal action, and vehemently denies that they were guilty of wrongdoing.

Turkish governments since that time have consistently rejected charges of genocide, typically arguing either that those Armenians who died were simply in the way of a war or that killings of Armenians were justified by their individual or collective support for the enemies of the Ottoman Empire. The recent decision by the French lower house on October 12, 2006 to pass a bill making it illegal to deny the Armenian genocide has provoked intense reactions in the Turkish media. Note, however, that the decision has yet to be ratified by the French Senate to fully become law.

And these were hardly the only massacres perpetrated against the Armenians by the Turks: the Hamidian Massacres that occurred between 1895 and 1896 (a mere twenty years previous) resulted in the deaths of as many as 300,000 Armenians, again at the hand of the Muslim Turks. Turkey has, by and large, tried to suppress publication of articles and documents pertaining to the Armenian Genocide, and Mr. Dink had run afoul of the Turkish authorities before:

As editor of Agos, Mr Dink was one of Turkey’s most prominent Armenian voices.In October 2005, he was given a six-month suspended jail sentence for writing a newspaper article that addressed the mass killing of Ottoman Armenians.

The European Union had raised the issue of Mr Dink’s treatment as a possible barrier to Turkey’s EU entry.

Perhaps I’m seeing bogeymen where there are none, but this murder seems to me to smack of the typical arrogance with which Islam treats people from other cultures and other religions. The Armenian community in Turkey is small (forty to seventy thousand people), and is primarily concentrated around Istanbul. Apparently, the Armenians in Turkey are primarily bankers and merchants, positions in society with some influence — at least economically — and as a result have been able to establish their own schools and newspapers. The community is also fiercely Christian, and as a result (as Christians living in a Muslim nation) they would be afforded the status of dhimmis by the government of the nation they inhabit.

Dhimmitude is a rather classic example of Islamic double-speak, in that it technically means a “free, non-Muslim” person living in a Muslim land. Of course, “free” in this context historically has meant “not a slave”…leaving unspoken the truth that between a truly free man and a slave, there are many, many degrees of repression and subservience.

In truth, dhimmitude is the functional fulfilment of the increasingly well-known Koranic verse Sura 9:29: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold forbidden that which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” Essentially, it is a status conferred on those non-Muslims living in Muslim lands who, while not willing to convert — pardon me, “revert” — to Islam, are nevertheless willing to offer some outward sign of submission to their Islamic betters; in return, they can live relatively free from molestation and oppression.  The most typical sign of submission is, of course, a tax, named above: the jizya.

Coming back to the point, then: as a prominent Armenian living in Turkey, Mr. Dink was still, essentially, a dhimmi, and within the eyes of the Muslim tradition of Turkey (if not the law as well) and its adherents, he was not allowed (among other things) to bring testimony against his Islamic betters.  Indeed, he was convicted once for doing just that (see above).

Not content to count himself as subdued and humbly refrain from criticizing the Turkish government to any further extent, he did what any honest, courageous man ought to do: keep hammering on the issue.  And unfortunately, this time someone decided that a somewhat more permanent solution than a suspended sentence was necessary.  Yet in a strange way, his death strikes a note of hope: if the Turkish government, and Muslims in Turkey, cannot stand to hear criticism, and must react to it with violence and murder, then they are — essentially by definition — weak.  And as long as more critics rise in place of ones who fall, then weak governments and weak religions will eventually fall.

~ by Kenneth on January 19, 2007.