[1][2] He regularly received emails threatening his life, responding in one instance by comparing himself to a dove, "equally obsessed by what goes on on my left and right, front and back.

[3] In his final Agos column on 10 January 2007, Dink noted that propaganda targeting him led many Turkish citizens to consider him an enemy of Turkey: "It is obvious that those wishing to alienate me and make me weak and defenseless reached their goal.

Right now they have brought about a significant circle of people who are not low in number and who regard me as someone "insulting Turkish identity" due to dirty and false information.

[11] Another witness, the owner of a restaurant near the Agos office, said the assassin looked about 20, wore jeans and a cap and shouted "I shot the infidel" as he left the scene.

On the same evening, Istanbul Governor Muammer Güler addressed the press to state that special investigation committees were pursuing nearly two dozen leads and that the police were analyzing ten thousand phone calls made from the vicinity of the crime scene.

[citation needed] News agencies reported on Saturday, 18:22 GMT, that the shooter had been identified as "Ogün Samast", a teenager born in 1990 and registered as residing in Trabzon, the same city where, a year before Dink's assassination, the Catholic priest Andrea Santoro was shot dead by a 16-year-old native of the city, in front of the church of Santa Maria of Trabzon, which is a nationalist gathering center.

Six people, including Samast's friend Yasin Hayal, who had been involved in a bombing of a McDonald's restaurant in Trabzon in 2004, were taken into custody and brought to Istanbul.

[18] After the church services, the hearse made a final tour for the thousands of marchers still gathered at Yenikapı, before proceeding to Balıklı Armenian Cemetery in Istanbul's Zeytinburnu neighborhood, where Dink's body was laid to rest.

[20] Ahmet Çokçınar, a prosecutor in the city of Samsun told the Anatolia news agency that Samast has confessed to killing Hrant Dink.

[22] Later news reports stated that Samast had had no idea of the significance of his act until watching TV coverage, and that he had ended his written confession with an expression of remorse.

Staff colonel Ferhat Özsoy allegedly pressured chief master sergeant Murat Şahan into carrying out the assassination, offering him 300,000 Lira in reward.

[30] Doğan said that the chief of police intelligence (Turkish: Emniyet Genel Müdürlüğü İstihbarat Daire Başkanı), Ramazan Akyürek, ordered the expungement of a suspect's 48-page testimony.

[31] When the lawyers of the Dink family investigated the security camera records which were screening the street where the assassination took place, they identified four suspects speaking with their cellphones.

The lawyers stated that it is almost impossible that there cannot have been any calls during these hours or that the companies cannot have any base station, because Şişli is one of the most crowded regions in Istanbul at those times.

[41] Furthermore police commissioners Ramazan Akyürek and Ali Fuat Yılmazer were accused of not sharing their foreknowledge of the attack with the prosecutors, gendarmarie, or the intelligence services despite being briefed of a planned assassination several times.

[42] In 2020 Ramazan Akyürek and Ali Fuat Yılmazer were sentenced to 45 and 7 and a half years of prison respectively for illegal audio recordings of senior government officials.

[44] After the news of his assassination spread, condemnations came instantly from virtually all major political parties, government officials and NGOs in Turkey, as well as from many international observers.

The court decided to release the defendants Osman Altay, Irfan Özkan, Salih Hacisalihoglu and Veysel Toprak to be tried without remand and adjourned the hearing to 1 October.

The indictment demanded aggravated life imprisonment for Erhan Tuncel and Yasin Hayal for "inciting the killing of Hrant Dink".

"[82] On 25 July 2011, Ogün Samast was convicted of murder and being in illegal possession of a firearm by Istanbul's Heavy Juvenile Criminal Court.

[88] Hayals lawyers appealed the verdict,[89] which later was annulled as special authority courts formerly active in the trial were dissolved by a new law which came into effect in March 2014.

Erhan Tuncel was initially found not guilty of Dink's murder but later captured in 2013[92] and subsequently condemned to 99 years imprisonment in July 2019.