‘For 14 years, the only thing they strive for is to close this case’

* Photo and source: Agos Newspaper

Click to read the article in Turkish

Yesterday marked the 14th year since Agos Newspaper Editor-in-Chief Hrant Dink was assassinated in front of what was then the Agos Newspaper's building in Şişli, İstanbul on January 19, 2007. We publish the full speech made by Rakel Dink, the wife of the late journalist, at the commemoration ceremony in front of the building where Dink was murdered.

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"Dear friends, we have been here for the last 14 years. We are here today amid a pandemic along with the sufferings and uncertainties it caused. I do know very well that so many hearts are beating with us today.

"This place has become a venue for remembering and reminding the things they want to make us forget. It has served as a place where we learned how to be sisters and brothers in suffering, to share the sorrow, to face the truth and make others confront it as well. It has served as a place where people seeking and striving for justice and the truth come together. It has offered a space for speaking out about the killings committed or condoned by the state as well as the murder trials left unresolved callously and ruthlessly.

"As a granddaughter of a 'leftover of the sword', over the last century, I have seen how our plight has been denied and refuted. As if this was not enough, they added more insult to injury by naming it 'the so-called genocide'. Has it ever occurred to you that you may be hurting or offending someone? Your endless hostility towards Armenians, your insults, humiliation, grudge, and rage have literally consumed us.

"Don't you ever get tired of it? What a pity. Your silence and brazenness are so shameful. May God help us all.

"According to the word of God, 'whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.' 

"Not letting it happen - never again - entails responsibility, awareness, justice, and a true expression of remorse. It takes confession, apology, and repentance.

"Dear friends,

"There has been plenty of suffering and pain, there has been way too many massacres, murders, griefs, trials. So much so that we feel embarrassed to talk about our own sorrow. Regrettably, we have a state that has never-ending problems with its citizens...Yet, who has ever gained what by means of killing, hostility, and war? Other than causing more death, grief, suffering, famine, barrenness?

"While we can live in peace, love, benevolence, abundance, and joy, why nurture malevolence, enmity, persecution and wars? These also amount to hostility towards God. Is this how clean hands look like? Which soap can cleanse this virus? Can human dignity be possibly preserved in this way? Do states, governments become dignified like this?

"My husband's murder trial has been going on for 14 years. They could not resolve the murder in the past 14 years! They failed to do so, because it's not their intention to solve it. The only thing they strive for is to close this case. They spare no efforts to find a way. But it is like a metastasis. It has spread all over the place, they are not able to wrap it up.

"How else can one explain the failure to carry out an effective investigation for all these years? How else can one explain the failure to question – not even once – those who issued threats and finger pointed my husband as a target? Very soon, they will once again issue a court verdict in an attempt to close it up. If you are so sure that this murder trial is over, then why do you dismiss the requests filed by our lawyers?

"Why on earth you do not investigate those who threatened and targeted him and instigated his assassination?

"Throughout these 14 years, in this country, so many alliances have been formed and collapsed. Our murder trial proceedings kept changing colour with each coming alliance. One cannot help but wonder: Whom in which alliance will be 'touched' by the murder trial this time?

"Let me put it bluntly. Claiming that Hrant was killed by FETÖ is synonymous to saying, "it was not me, it was my hand". Alleging that Hrant was murdered by Ergenekon is tantamount to saying, '"it was not me, it was my foot'.

"All these years, you have come all the way up to here, blatantly, walking on your feet. And then you held the gun with your two hands, pulling the trigger.

"You killed my Chutag. Who are you after all, if you are not the sum of your feet, hands, and tongue? For the past 14 years, we have seen a very bizarre image of a state that tries to prove due performance of its duties while backing all these denialists, suspects, and witnesses.

"It almost resembles a state that strives to certify its idiocy in order to prove that it is not the assassin... Just let it go; no matter which wall, which building will come down. People of this country will build back better anyway. If people fail to build it, then it means they are already in ruins.

"There are seven things God detests. Sadly, we are full of pride and lies. Homicides, deceivers, evildoers are mushrooming.

"Yet, regrettably, they are fed and fostered by discriminatory mindsets, disputes, enmity, and falsehood. It would be fair if we grieve for our entire country, for we are full of those, beyond measure.

"'Woe to those who draw sin along with cords of deceit, and wickedness as with cart ropes!...Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.' (Isaiah 5:18-20)" (EKN/SD)