Turkish parliament rejects inquiry into Hrant Dink’s murder

Turkish parliament on Wednesday has voted against a proposal to launch a new investigation into the killing of Hrant Dink, an Armenian journalist in Turkey who was shot dead in Istanbul on Jan.19, 2007.

The proposal submitted by pro-Kurdish HDP on the 16th anniversary of Dink’s assassination was rejected by the votes of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling AKP-MHP alliance, Diken news website reported.

Hrant Dink, the editor-in-chief of Istanbul’s bilingual Agos newspaper was gunned down in broad daylight in front of his office by Ogun Samast, a Turkish ultranationalist teenager. Samast who shot Dink in the head at close range, was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2011. An Istanbul court in 2021 also convicted 26 defendants including government security officials over their involvement in Dink’s assassination. Despite four defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment and two to aggravated life imprisonment, the links between the deep state officials and the gunman have left the ruling unsatisfactory in terms of justice.

“Not the evil itself, but its leakage was punished,” Dink’s family said in a written statement released after the court’s decision. It was “far from the truth,” according to them.

Dink, advocating a reconciliation between Turkey and the Armenians, faced several lawsuits on the charges of “insulting Turkishness” over his articles and received numerous death threats from Turkish nationalists until his assassination.

”I feel like a pigeon,” Hrant Dink wrote in his last article.

“Like a pigeon I wander uneasily amidst this city, watching my back constantly, so timid and yet, so free.”

More than 100,000 people gathered to say farewell to the Armenian journalist in his funeral.