Hrant Dink

[10] Hrant Dink continued his education at Istanbul University, where he studied zoology and became a sympathizer of TİKKO, the armed faction of the Maoist TKP-ML.

[14] His friend Armanek Bakırcıyan, who changed his name to Orhan Bakır, later rose in TİKKO to membership of the central committee, took part in armed struggle in Eastern Turkey and was killed during fighting in 1978.

[16][17] Staying at the Tuzla Camp during summers and at the Gedikpaşa Orphanage during winters, Rakel learned Turkish and Armenian, and finished primary school.

[20] Keeping the duality to the end, his funeral service was held in the Apostolic Church, by Patriarch Mutafyan, with Protestant ministers delivering eulogies at the burial.

[22] Having graduated from the university, Hrant Dink completed his military service in Denizli; not being promoted to sergeant despite his full marks on the examination caused him to weep.

[10][23] Returning to İstanbul, Dink established "Beyaz Adam" (literally "White Man"), a bookstore in the Bakırköy district with his brothers Hosrop and Yervant in 1979.

Dink, together with his wife Rakel, took over the management of the Tuzla Armenian Children's Camp at the time of Güzelyan's arrest, while continuing in the bookstore business with his brothers.

"[27]The Tuzla Armenian Children's Camp was the subject of an exhibit by the Turkish Human Rights Organization in 1996, the materials from which was published in book form in 2000, with a foreword by Orhan Pamuk and an afterword by Hrant Dink.

[27] In 2001 the camp grounds were sold to a local businessman who intended to build a house on the site until Dink contacted him and let him know that the land had belonged to an orphanage.

[17] At the time of Dink's death in 2007, the camp grounds continued to stand empty, awaiting the new Foundation law that was passed at the end of 2006 but was vetoed and returned to parliament by President Sezer.

[17] Dink was one of the founders of Agos weekly, the only newspaper in Turkey published in Armenian and Turkish, serving as its editor-in-chief from its founding in 1996 until his death in 2007.

[29] Agos was born out of a meeting called by Patriarch Karekin II when mainstream media started linking Armenians of Turkey with the illegal Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

[29] A picture of PKK's leader Abdullah Öcalan and an Assyrian priest appeared in a Turkish daily, with the caption "Here's proof of the Armenian-PKK cooperation".

[29] Up to that point, he had contributed occasional articles and book reviews to local Armenian language newspapers and corrections and letters to the editor to the national dailies.

[29] Always willing to speak on the issues faced by Armenians, Hrant Dink emerged as a leader in his community and became a well-known public figure in Turkey.

As a leftist activist, Dink often spoke and wrote about the problems of democratization in Turkey, defending other authors such as Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk and novelist Perihan Mağden who came under criticism and prosecution for their opinions.

[35] In a speech Hrant Dink delivered on 19 May 2006, at a seminar jointly organized in Antalya by the Turkish Journalists' Association and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, he said:"I think the fundamental problems in Turkey exist for the majority as well .

[38] Dink hoped his questioning would pave the way for peace between the two peoples: "If I write about the [Armenian] genocide it angers the Turkish generals.

[29][40] In 2005, he accused Germany of using the genocide to block Turkey's entry to the European Union, stating that he was ashamed, as an Armenian, that such manner of drama and political maneuvering should continue into the present day, and stating that he shared from the heart the pain of the Turkish families and Muslim families as part of the process he called yüzleşme or Turkey's confronting its past.

"[29] By pointing out issues of rhetorical discourse that hampered Armenian-Turkish dialogue, he believed these obstacles could be overcome to the benefit of Turkish Armenians.

"[29] In his latest conference, held in Malatya Association of Entrepreneurs, Dink claimed that the Kurds were now falling in for the traps that the Armenians fell in the past.

The real subject of the article is the Armenian diaspora who, once they have come to terms with the Turkish part of their identity, can seek new answers to their questions from independent Armenia.

[51]In a February 2006 interview with the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Dink spoke about his 2005 conviction for denigrating Turkishness in a criminal court: "This is a political decision because I wrote about the Armenian genocide and they detest that, so they found a way to accuse me of insulting Turks.

[61] 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.

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.

On 25 July 2011, Samast was convicted of premeditated murder and illegal possession of a firearm by Istanbul's Heavy Juvenile Criminal Court.

In July 2014, the Turkish Supreme Court ruled that the investigation into the killing had been flawed, thus paving the way for trials of police officials and other public authorities.

In the pursuit of this case hearings were held, and in January 2017 Ali Fuat Yılmazer, the former head of Turkey's police intelligence branch, gave testimony that the killing was "deliberately not prevented" and security authorities in Istanbul and Trabzon were responsible.

[73] In 2011 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Turkey had failed to protect Hrant Dink's life and freedom of expression.

He succeeded in making the Armenian genocide a Turkish issue, a debate necessary for freedom of expression, of justice and democratisation inside Turkey.

Plaque outside Agos' office in honor of Hrant Dink