The ever-reinterpreted Hrant Dink murder

On Jan. 17, 2007, Hrant Dink, a Turkish Armenian intellectual and the editor-in-chief of the Istanbul-based Armenian daily newspaper, Agos, was assassinated right outside his office in one of the busiest streets in the country. The assassin, Ogün Samast, was a 17-year-old ultra-nationalist from Trabzon, a Black Sea town known for its tough guys and nationalist circles. He was apparently encouraged by his elder "brothers" to "punish the Armenian who insulted Turkishness." It seems they were fanatic and vulgar enough to not even realize that Dink in fact never "insulted" Turks, but rather tried to reconcile them with Armenians.  

The murder sparked a widespread reaction, as tens of thousands marched in Istanbul for Dink's funeral. Moreover, finding the "real culprits" of the murder, besides the trigger-man Samast and his closest buddy Yasin Hayal, turned into a major liberal cause.

However, there was also a broader political drama going on in Turkey at the time. The alliance between the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Gülen movement was getting ready to take on the old establishment, which was packed with ultra-nationalists, some of whom shared the very same ideology that targeted Hrant Dink. That is why, in subsequent years, the Dink murder became one of the much-quoted references for the "Ergenekon" case. Accordingly, there was a heinous secularist-nationalist cabal called "Ergenekon" that had organized almost every evil in recent Turkish history, including political assassinations. Various spokesmen for both the AKP and the Gülen movement pushed for this theory, practically using the Dink murder to demonize the masters of the "Old Turkey."

However, the co-masters of the "New Turkey" were destined to clash soon. As is...