Arat Dink (born 1979) is a Turkish

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

and the executive editor of ''

Agos ''Agos'' (in hy, Ակօս, "furrow") is an Armenian bilingual weekly newspaper published in Istanbul, Turkey, established on 5 April 1996. ''Agos'' has both Armenian and Turkish pages as well as an online English edition. Today, the paper h ...

'', a bilingual Turkish-

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...

weekly newspaper published in

Istanbul Istanbul ( , ; tr, İstanbul ), formerly known as Constantinople ( grc-gre, Κωνσταντινούπολις; la, Constantinopolis), is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, serving as the country's economic, ...

. He is the son of

Rakel Dink Rakel Dink (born 1959) is a Turkish Armenian human rights activist and head of the Hrant Dink Foundation. She is the last member of the Armenian Varto Tribe who had settled in Cizre. She is the widow of Hrant Dink, a Turkish journalist and human ...

and

Hrant Dink Hrant Dink ( hy, Հրանդ Տինք; Western ; 15 September 1954 – 19 January 2007) was a Turkish-Armenian intellectual, editor-in-chief of ''Agos'', journalist and columnist. As editor-in-chief of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspa ...

, the former editor-in-chief of the same paper, who was murdered by Ogün Samast, a Turkish

ultra-nationalist Ultranationalism or extreme nationalism is an extreme form of nationalism in which a country asserts or maintains detrimental hegemony, supremacy, or other forms of control over other nations (usually through violent coercion) to pursue its sp ...

who was seventeen years old at the time.

Trial on Hrant Dink's assassination

Arat Dink was brought to trial as a co-defendant as the executive editor of Agos along with Serkis Seropyan, holder of the weekly's publishing license in the third and last case that was opened against Hrant Dink on charges of 'denigrating Turkishness' under

Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code Article 301 is an article of the Turkish Penal Code making it illegal to insult Turkey, the Turkish nation, Turkish government institutions, or Turkish national heroes such as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. It took effect on June 1, 2005, and was introd ...

. The charge was pressed in September 2006 after Agos republished a 14 July 2006 interview of Hrant Dink by the

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency was estab ...

news agency where Hrant Dink referred to the 1915 massacre of Armenians in the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...

genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...

. The charges against Hrant Dink were dropped in the first hearing of the case, originally scheduled for 22 March 2007 and rescheduled to 14 June 2007 due to his death and continued for Serkis Seropyan and Arat Dink, with the second hearing scheduled for 18 July 2007. At the court hearing, Arat Dink accused judges of contributing to his father's death by making him a target thanks to their high-profile judicial proceedings. "I think it is primitive, absurd and dangerous to consider as an insult to Turkish identity the recognition of a historic event as a genocide," he said, quoted by the Anatolia news agency.

Trial of Arat Dink for insulting Turkey's identity

On 11 October 2007 Arat Dink was convicted of insulting Turkey's identity for republishing his father's remarks. He was given a one-year suspended sentence for "insulting Turkishness", like his father before him.

Awards

He was awarded the Guardian Journalism Award by

Index on Censorship Index on Censorship is an organization campaigning for freedom of expression, which produces a quarterly magazine of the same name from London. It is directed by the non-profit-making Writers and Scholars International, Ltd (WSI) in association w ...

on 21 April 2008.

References

1979 births Living people Turkish human rights activists Turkish people of Armenian descent Ethnic Armenian journalists Turkish journalists Writers from Istanbul 21st-century Turkish writers {{turkey-journalist-stub