Hrant Dink, who supporters said sought reconciliation between the country’s Muslims and minority Christians.
Mourners were seen with signs saying "We are all Hrant Dink," or "We are all Armenians."
They lined the route of the funeral procession – an eight kilometers (5 miles) march between the newspaper building where he was gunned down and the cemetery where he was buried.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip said earlier that a "bullet has been fired at democracy and freedom of expression," and that the attack was "leveled against free speech, democracy and the unity of the Turkish people."
On one of his last articles Dink said he had received multiple death threats from nationalists
because of his opinions on the mass killings of Armenian Christians during the final days of the Ottoman Empire.
TEENAGER SUSPECTED
Turkish prosecutors claim the teenager suspected of gunning down Dink in Istanbul on Friday, January 19, has confessed. Ogun Samast, 17, was escorted to the scene of the crime on Sunday, January 21 as part of a reconstruction, Euronews Television reported.
He is reportedly been held along with six other men, one of whom has spent 11 months in jail for a bomb attack outside a McDonald’s restaurant in Trabzon in 2004.
Police said so far they have found the murder has no political dimension or link to any organization, but analysts have not ruled out the boy may have been inspired by nationalists.
Dink, 53, angered Turkish nationalists by using the term "genocide" to describe the killings of up to 1.5 million Armenian as well as Assyrian and Hellenic Christians carried out by Turkish Ottoman forces in the 1915-1917 period.
GOVERNEMT DENIAL
Turkey’s government has denied the figure or the involvement of Turkish forces in mass killings and rejects the term "genocide" and no more than 300,000 Armenians perished at the time.
The government claims most of them 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.
In 2005, a Turkish court sentenced Dink to six months in jail on charges of insulting Turkey’s national identity. The controversial law under which he was charged has also been used against other intellectuals and Christian missionaries
The European Union has urged Turkey to abolish the legislation saying the law unduly restricts freedom of speech. Turkey has been in talks to join the 27-nation bloc, but the legislation has been cited among reasons for the difficult negotiations on membership.
Armenia, the United States have also condemned the killing of the journalist. (With reports from Turkey and BosNewsLife Research).
