According to the Turkish Media, Armenian officials and representatives of the Armenian Diaspora have been invited to Istanbul to be present at Dink’s funerals. Now besides the killer over ten people are under custody suspected in the crime. One of the suspected people, Yasin Hayal has been sentenced to 11 months imprisonment for exploding the “McDonalds” restaurant in Trapizon. The weapon that the murder used was given to him by Hayal, besides that they had a conversation before the murder. The Turkish police are investigating the case to find out whether Ogun Samast, the murderer, is connected with ultranationalists. The investigation works are coordinated by the head of inner affairs, Abdulkadir Aksun and the justice minister Jemil Chichek. The international and Armenian Media will remember this tragedy long, however the Armenian critics has grown to anti-Turkish hysteria, which was predictable. This crime was human tragedy. A person was killed, who was really a bright representative of the intelligentsia and was trying to change the Turkish and Armenian understandings to make them understand that neighbors can’t have a bright future if they are full of enmity and don’t have tolerance towards each other. Even his tragic death did more for this purpose and for the purpose of recognizing the Armenian genocide in the world than we have done so far. We are just annihilating and killing the work that he has done so far. Some people that think that are representing the Intelligentsia are trying to prove that the Turkish ethnos can never be civilized, that the free speech is intimidated in Turkey, the Turkish society is “injecting” the idea of being a higher nation than the other ones in their society, that this crime shows that it is impossible to develop ties with Turks and such appearances create conditions in Turkey for violence and murders. In a word, they speak the following nonsense slogan; “the Turks stay being Turk”. At the same time, by speaking this slogan they try to describe the Turks in the worst manner, i.e. in order to describe the Turks in the worst manner we can’t find a better word than “Turk”. Certainly, free speech is limited and intimidated in Turkey, Turkey is too far from European values, there are many Turkish criminals in the world, etc., indeed it is nonsense to explain that fact by the Turkish ethnos. The ethnos does not matter. Now let’s try to look at ourselves and see who we are. We tell our children of any age that the Turks are too bad, they are murderers and they have always wanted to annihilate us. As a result of that the word “Turk” has become something bad in our society and we use that word when we want to describe someone in the worst manner. Nevertheless, we have done such things too… and we are still doing that. Tigran Naghdalyan and Tigran Hairapetyan were killed in our country. Furthermore, they were killed by Armenians. Karen Demirchyan and Vazgen Sargsyan were killed by Armenians too. Don’t you think that we are the ones that created an adequate environment in our society to bring up Nairi Hunanyans and others like him? Does this mean that the ethnos is bad? We are arguing everyone to recognize the fact of the Armenian Genocide, we criticize the Turks, their country, where they killed Hrant Dink, indeed we don’t argue our own government to investigate the cases of murdering Vazgen Sargsyan, Demirchyan, Tigran Naghdalyan and others. Weren’t those murderers brought up in our own society? Why do we claim justice from the others but not from us too? It is because those that organized the Genocide and killed Hrant Dink are Turks, but those who killed Naghdalyan, Vazgen Sargsyan and the others are Armenians. Some of us swear putting hands on weapons and then discuss the civilization of others. They speak about the hate of Turks towards Armenians, but want to see blood in Istanbul. We say that our nation is clever, but some “intelligentsia representatives” seriously say that “Turks stay being Turk”. When a Turk receives a Nobel prize, we say that he is not a Turk since their society is not able to bring up anyone with such high values. We say that speech freedom is pressed in Turkey, nevertheless we don’t speak about the fact that in Armenia TV companies were closed too, editorial offices were broken and journalists were killed. What is the difference between us, the Turks and the Russians? Don’t we think that we are better than the other nations? Even when we saw thousands of Turks gathered in one of the Turkish biggest cities with posters reading “All we are Armenians, all we are Dinks” we said that it was not natural and it was just imitation. We have created an environment in our country that doesn’t let us believe that one day these two nations may develop ties and have normal relations. This is shameful for us. We have said that they are murderers so much that we are ready to kill anyone that may manage to say that these two nations should develop close relations. Isn’t it true? Now please think about what makes us better than the other nations… Furthermore, crime is not connected with ethnos generally. Certainly, Armenians stay being Armenian, Turks stay being Turk, and generally ethnic background does not change and cannot be mutated. The problem is the fact that there are ultranationalists in any nation. Turkish ultranationalists are killing anyone that criticizes them in the Genocide openly like Armenian ultranationalists would kill anyone that would advocate for developing cooperation with Turks, which example is Hrant Dink’s murder. It is a pity that now Turkish ultranationalists have tools to influence on the Turkish government and their policy. Certainly, when the Armenian ultranationalists read this article they will criticize me and those who think like me, but first of all I think we’d better try to change the environment in our own country, try to fight out the ultranationalists’ thesis and later try to help the others to do the same in their countries too. At least, not only the Turkish society is guilty in Hrant Dink’s murder, but our society as well; it is our fault as much as we have left Hrant Dink alone on his way to achieve his ambitions and supported the ultranationalists in Turkey to grow.
