HRANT DINK was a Turkish-Armenian journalist.

Do you know how many Armenians there are in Turkey? Or, to fix my question, how many Armenians are left in Turkey? When you see the dramatic difference between the old numbers, you can ask the question: why and how did this change happen? And you would also ask what happened to them.

Dink was murdered on January 19 2007 after he was shot outside his Istanbul office three times in the neck and the hand for asking those questions as an Armenian journalist from Turkey. 

Turkey’s history is full of unsolved murders and the murders of journalists.

Three years prior to his death, Dink wrote about founder of the Turkish state Ataturk’s adopted daughter and Turkey’s first female pilot Sabiha Gokcen who bombed the Kurdish-Alevi city of Dersim.

He claimed she was an Armenian who became Turkified and provided documents to prove what he was claiming. The mainstream newspapers shared this news as if it contained an insult.

The head of the general staff condemned it and Dink was called into his office by the deputy governor and threatened not to report on such issues. Gökçen was precious to the state and could not be Armenian!

Speaking at a conference Dink stated that he was not a Turk, but he was a Turkish-Armenian and was put on trial for the crime of “denigrating Turkishness.”

The hatred against him was not limited to legal cases. He also received many threatening messages. From time to time he wrote about the threats in the column of his paper and said he had lodged criminal complaints but did not get results.

He was shot and killed on the day he published his last article, My Heart’s Dovish Disquiet, where he mentioned that those who wanted to isolate him had been partly successful and spoke about his fears and incoming threats.

When the killer Ogun Samast was caught the next day, he was welcomed to the police station as a hero. The police gave him the Turkish flag and said: “Well done, my lion.”

Samast said that he had been practising shooting games with 10 youngsters several months before the murder, and that he had been chosen because he had a good grip and could run fast. 

It was later revealed that a police informer, who was subsequently tried in the case, had been warned of the Dink assassination plan a total of 17 times. The murder had been known about widely in the city of Trabzon before it happened.

The state, which failed to protect Dink, covered up the case after the murder, tying up all the news channels under the guise that the murder was not planned or organised, but that it was just the hate crime of an angry young man.

Although some public authority figures were brought to trial as a result of the persistent public pressure, each was acquitted one by one, and the main criminals were never tried.

Every crime that is not confronted repeats itself. Dink knew this and demanded the Turkish state confront its role in the Armenian genocide.

Dink’s assassination broke the traumatic silence in Turkish society whether they were Armenian, Kurdish or Turkish.  He said something that was so far unheard of at this level. 

“What happened to 1.5 million Armenians who lived in these lands until 1915 and then disappeared?” He did this, not in a vengeful way, but in a peaceful manner, as a call for democratisation. Dink wanted such a confrontation to end further massacres in the future

Dink’s assassination and what happened in the legal process is also a complete updated version of the genocide. But did you know that the word “Armenian” is still used as a curse in Turkey, as it has been for years.

During another genocide in the Kurdish provinces three years ago, the police searched people’s homes.

Women of Cizre said that police shouted: “Armenian offspring, your end will be bad! Allahu akbar!” We take our strength from the experience of these women by questioning what the Armenians had done to them.

Did you know that it’s still a crime to ask what happened to the Armenians in Turkey? 

Garo Paylan, an Armenian deputy, was banned from parliament for three consecutive terms two years ago for calling the Armenian genocide a genocide. His speech also removed from the parliamentary records because it deemed to be harmful. 

I remember hearing about Dink’s death in Taksim for the first time on the radio. 

From that very first moment, thousands of people came together with similar anxiety and anger for the first action that spread by word of mouth. 

Hundreds of thousands of people came together in crowd, the size of which surprised everyone involved. People used the phrase: “We are all Hrant, We are all Armenians,” without fearing how the fascists would use it for their own agenda. 

Many banners appeared at the funeral bearing those words and we have been meeting for the last 12 years to repeat the same promise.

So those of us who have been gathering for 12 years, we are the minority who refuse the accept the Turkish government’s hatred of Armenians. Dink’s death continues to unite us and we find strength from each other.

In the last two years freedom of expression was abolished; newspapers, televisions were closed; books were banned; hundreds of thousands of employees were sacked from their jobs without a judicial decision; many MPs deputies and mayors were arrested, cities were plundered; work-related murders and murders of women reached massacre levels.

These examples look like they will increase even more. The Turkish state wants the Dink’s case to be forgotten while we try to tackle these issues. They know they can do the same thing again tomorrow if the case is forgotten.

We are all living My Heart’s Dovish Disquiet as Dink wrote in his last column. Those killed, those in prison, in exile and those still stubbornly trying to do their jobs are facing this disquiet in Turkey.

Resolving the case of Hrant Dink is our obligation to democracy in Turkey.

No justice for 12 years. No conscience for 12 years. No Hrant for 12 years.

We’ve have been here 12 years, Ahparig (brother).