Publisher and journalist Ragıp Zarakolu was awarded by the founders of the Armenian Human Rights Association with the Hakop Meghapart Medal of Honour Lifetime Achievement Award.
Zarakolu is the first laureate for this award from Turkey. He was rewarded for his contribution to the publication of the Armenian history, culture and literature in Turkey. Zarakolu said that he was happy to accept the prize, "This award is a great honour and even though I am the first Turkish person to receive it, I strongly belief that other Turkish intellectuals are going to follow".
Human rights advocator Zarakolu, owner of the Belge Publishing Company, attended the prize giving ceremony in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. The award is founded by the Armenian National Library.
Right before setting off to Yerevan, Zarakolu answered questions to reporters of the Daily News and the Economic Review magazine. He indicated that the award carried a great moral importance for him and emphasized that other Turkish people would follow as laureates.
"Because there are many brilliant intellectuals in Turkey that are not afraid to voice the distress they are experiencing in Turkey and that take human rights as the basic criterion like me. Moreover, these people are not afraid of calling their experiences genocide".
Zarakolu is the Head of the Commission on Freedom to Publishing of the Turkish Publishers Association. He was awarded with many national and international prestigious prizes in the field of freedom of expression and opinion.
He received the Sarajevo International Studies Association (IAGS) Award, the Freedom of Expression Award of the Norwegian Writers Association and the Freedom of Expression Award bestowed by the Turkish Journalists Association.
Zarakolu stressed the diplomatic rapprochement process between Turkey and Armenia that was initiated with a football match in 2008 but shelved when the protocols neither passed through the Turkish nor through the Armenian parliament in 2010.
"Sincere steps towards a normalization of relations are not being taken. Turkey purports to the world to have taken steps for the normalization but in fact there is no progress because the steps are not sincere", Zarakolu claimed.
He said mutual relations have become even more complicated due to this sort of attitude. "When the rising expectations of the people remain unanswered, destruction will increase".
Hakop Meghapart
Hakop Meghapart is renowned as one of the founders of Armenian printing. He can be called the Guttenberg of Armenia. He commenced his work in Venice during the 15th century. Between 1512 and 1513, his publishing company published the first Armenian book entitled "Urbatagirk", followed by "Pataregetetr", "Aghtark" and "Tagharan".
The Urbatagirk work comprised 124 pages printed in red and black, 24 pages were coloured. Meghapart's books were given special ISBN numbers. (EÖ/VK)
