Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Tens Of Thousands Protest Turkey Court Decision In Journalist Killing

Tens of thousands took to the streets of Istanbul to protest a court decision not to widen the investigation into the murder of a Turkish-Armenian journalist five years ago. The court assigned guilt to several nationalists deemed responsible for the killing of Hrant Dink, but decided the prosecution did not present enough evidence that there was an illegal organization behind the murder. The investigation shied away from exploring the suspected role of some nationalist police and military officials.

Dink, the editor of a Turkish-Armenian newspaper, wrote critically about Turkey’s treatment of its Armenian ethnic minority, and particularly about the killing of more than 1 million Armenians by the Ottoman army in 1915 which he and others considered genocide, a term that is hotly contested. The advocacy group Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) research demonstrated widespread nationalist threats leading up to Dink’s murder on the front steps of his paper.

The protests were the largest in Turkey in years.

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