timeimmortal

There appears to be some spotty evidence that Hrant Dink, the Armenian journalist who was murdered in Turkey last week, was killed…well, for some of the reasons I had mused about:

ISTANBUL (AFP) - A 17-year-old prime suspect in the killing of Turkish journalist Hrant Dink, one of his country’s most prominent ethnic Armenians, has has confessed to the murder, a prosecutor has said.

“He admitted he committed the murder” in his preliminary interrogation in the Black Sea port of Samsun, where he was arrested overnight, the city’s chief prosecutor Ahmet Gokcinar told Anatolia news agency.

The suspect, Ogun Samast, reportedly said he shot Dink because the journalist insulted the Turkish nation.

“I shot him after saying the Friday prayers. I’m not sorry,” the CNN Turk news channel quoted him as saying in his testimony. “I read news on the Internet. He said Sunday ‘I’m from Turkey but Turkish blood is dirty’ and that’s why I decided to kill him.”

There’s that religion of peace at work again, I see.

I have to admit, I’m not surprised to see the Islamic angle enter into the investigation — indeed, I rather suspected it when I read of Mr. Dink’s murder for the first time.  And it stands to reason…a non-Muslim speaking in critical tones about a predominantly Muslim nation takes his life in his hands.  That’s not something I remark upon for any reason other than that it has become a reality in many places, Turkey included.

Of course, what would a good story about Muslim violence be without a little bit of a media hush-up?

Dink was shot twice in the head by a man who appeared to be 18 or 19 years old. The teenager, wearing blue jeans, a denim jacket and a white hat, was caught on tape by a surveillance camera of the Agos building.

The owner of a nearby restaurant, who witnessed the assassination of Mr. Dink, said that the killer left the scene shouting “I shot the non-Muslim.”

The above quote is, of course, a translation, which is why it reads kind of funny.  In English, the phrase would probably be better if it were transliterated to read “I shot the infidel.”  I’m lead to understand that in Turkish the phrase is much more “normal” sounding, and that “infidel” would not be the most correct translation.

That minor quibble aside, the part about the quotation that is relevant is that it can only be found in a handful of early reports about the crime: all other reports following up on Mr. Dink and his killer(s?) neglect to mention what the killer(s?) allegedly shouted as he(they?) fled the scene.

Seriously.  If you search up Mr. Dink on Google News, you get hundreds of hits.  If you search up the phrase “I shot the infidel” in association with Mr. Dink’s name, you get maybe 23 hits total.  What is more, stories in the AP that had initially contained this quoted phrase have now been sanitized to exclude it.

I can understand corrections being made, but I’m usually suspicious of corrections made without notice given for the reason (unless it’s something obvious like a typo or a broken hyperlink).  But somehow I don’t think the deletion of a sentence falls under either of those categories.

At any rate, it now appears that tacit confirmations are beginning to emerge that Hrant Dink’s murder was indeed motivated (at least in part) by religion — by his being critical, as a non-Muslim, of a Muslim nation.  And how about that killer, eh?  Leaves Friday prayers and goes off right them to gun down the non-Muslim Mr. Dink.  Makes you wonder what the imam had to say in the sermon that week, doesn’t it?

~ by Kenneth on January 21, 2007.