Commemorating Hrant Dink, at The Same Spot!

The "Sari gelin" folk song collected the revolt from our eyes, held on to the wings of the birds flying in circles above our heads and rose into the sky.

We who have lived with the same sunlight during the day and the same stars at night, stood on the earth, which we have worn out with our wars, hate and theartificial boundaries we have drawn on its body, we stood immobile at the place where Hrant had been shot.

Rakel, with her presence of pain said, "Brothers and sisters, we cannot do anything without questioning the darkness which creates a murderer out of a baby." [...]

This was year ago; the huge body of tens of thousands of people walked silently, the sound of tens of thousands of feet echoed in the streets.

Istanbul which carried the pain of the people standing at the two sides of the road,  looking out of windows, collecting at bridges walked with us.

The noise of our steps and our clapping hands was scattered by the wind.

On that day we walked in the knowledge that the sky was wide enough for all of us, and the world was fertile enough to feed all of us.

We walked thinking that our mothers' languages were too beautiful to be forbidden,and that people were too precious to be killed.

We walked, in our minds ripping up the history books which speak of other peopleswith hatred.

We walked dreaming of a world in which children's names would not be changed.

We walked memorising the fact that discrimation is felt most in the hearts of thosediscriminated against.

We walked, surprised by the noise of our footsteps and the size of our hands.

We walked, feeling in our own flesh the cruelty of the three bullets which tookHrant from us.

We walked, hearing the sound of the wings of the birds circling above us as ifthey were very close to us.

We walked, realising that people with different ethnic origin who live on the samesoil live not like a fabric of life, but like the embroidery on top of it.

We walked in memory of those who have been killed for their thoughts, who werepushed for their roots, who were silenced for their language.

We walked, flowing like grains of sand in a sand clock from the boulevards andstreets, feeling that nothing would ever be the same again.

A long year has passed since then.

Of all my identities, I want to put forward that of a human being and commemorate Hrant Dink atthe same place.

Because I do not accept that people are killed for their thoughts, and I do not want to get used to their absence.

Because I do not want to let the murder of Hrant Dink and all the murders with unknown perpetrators to erode my sense of justice, and I want the darkness which takes the right of people to live to diffuse.

Because I do not accept that children are left without mothers and fathers, and because I miss a world in which people can live "like a tree, alone and free, andin brotherhood like a forest." (GI/TK/AG)

* On Saturday, 19January 2008, the anniversary of Hrant Dinks murder, he will be commemorated infront of the Agos newspaper office at 3 pm under the motto "For Hrant, forJustice."