police officials said Sunday, January 21. Ogun Samast, 17, told police he had read on the Internet that Dink had said "Turkish blood was dirty" so he had decided to kill him. Istanbul governor Muammer Guler said police captured the boy late on Saturday on a bus in Samsun still carrying the gun allegedly used in the murder.
The teenager reportedly said he did not regret the killing. Samast was identified after his father informed authorities that the suspect shown on television was his son, officials added.
The police investigation is continuing as six other people are also being held. Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan said he was pleased the suspect had been brought into police custody in such a short time.
The killing has shocked people across the country. "I feel happy the murderer has been saptured as much as I feel sad at Hrant Dink’s death," a man in Ankara said in television footage aired by Euronews Television.
A member of Istanbul’s small Turkish-Armenian community said: "Our pain is so great ecause Hrant meant something to us. We Turkish Armenians living here are really scared by the assassination and we don’t know how this fear will go away."
MASSACRE
Dink, 53, wrote about the alleged massacre of up to 1.5 million Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Christians carried out by Turkish Ottoman forces in the 1915-1917 period. Turkey’s government has denied the figure or the involvement of Turkish forces in mass killings. It says the events did not constitute genocide and claims that no more than 300,000 Armenians perished at the time.
Turkey has said that most Armenians died from hunger and disease after they were forcibly deported from eastern Turkey for having collaborated with invading Russian forces in the last days of the Ottoman Empire.
Dink was given a six-month suspended sentence in October 2005 after writing about especially the killings of Armenians and describing the events as "genocide". In his last article, he referred to the sentencing saying that when "the decision came out" his "hopes were crushed."
From then on, he added, he was "in the most distressed situation a person" could possibly be in. "The judge had made a decision in the name of the "Turkish nation" and had it legally registered that I had "denigrated Turkishness." I could have coped with anything but this," he wrote.
TURKISHNESS
The laws on Turkishness have also encouraged attacks against Christian leaders and missionaries, churches and human rights groups say. Just before he died, Dink made clear he had received death threats. "The memory of my computer is filled with angry, threatening lines sent by citizens from this sector… How real are these threats? To be honest, it is impossible for me to know for sure."
However the journalist said he and his family decided to stay in Turkey to continue what they saw as their fight for justice.
"2007 will probably be an even harder year for me," he predicted. "The court cases will continue, new ones will be initiated and God knows what kind of additional injustices I will have to face. I may see myself as frightened as a pigeon, but I know that in this country people do not touch pigeons. Pigeons can live in cities, even in crowds. A little scared perhaps, but free."
On Sunday, January 21, flowers and candles were seen in the street in Istanbul where he was eventually gunned-down. (With BosNewsLife Chief International Correspondent Stefan J. Bos).
