This is the biography of Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian journalist and political activist. He worked for the democratic rights of all Turkish citizens, including the right to speak freely about the genocide of Anatolia’s Armenians in 1915. As a result of his activism, Dink was assassinated by Turkish nationalists in 2007.
As founder and editor-in-chief of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper, Agos, in 1996, Dink was the first secular voice of Turkey’s silenced Christian-Armenian minority. He fought for the democratization of the Turkish political system. This was a risky undertaking, in a country where Armenians live as closed communities; it was also unprecedented in Turkey. Dink was prosecuted three times for ‘insulting and denigrating Turkishness’and ultimately convicted.
The biography is written as an oral history, and assembles a mosaic of memories as told by Dink’s family, friends, and comrades. Dink’s own “voice, ‘ in the form of his writings, is also included. Originally published in Turkey, it is now available for an English-speaking audience on the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide.
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Maureen Freely is a novelist and a professor at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom.