My Dear Brother Hrant!

When they are babies, there is a tale that is told to the children of the Anatolian soils that you sacrificed your life to go under. The adult puts his finger in the middle of the baby’s palm and begins to tell the tale with “A bird lands here...” And he continues... He tells in detail how these baby fingers are made accessory to an “operation” of murdering a dove.

“This one catches,” he says..

And, “This one plucks its feathers.”

After that, “This one cooks.”

The cruelty of the tale exaggerated: “This one eats.”

At the end of the tale, the smallest finger cries: “Where is my share? Where is my share?”

 

Think of this country as the palm, my dear brother.

You landed in the middle of the palm where even the tales are accomplices to atrocities.

A rough finger continues to tell the “operation” without any shame to the tiny minds of this country.

Your first murderers were the ones who “catch”... We know that.

People with tiny brains came upon you like a bird of prey.

They fixed their scaffolds at the gates of the courts.

The scavengers are called in.

We can also name them as dove killers.

We know your murderers; they were the ones who put the bullets in the cartridge.

 

You also know the “pluckers” who took over the job with enthusiasm.

Your brave body was covered with their scraps when you had fallen to this pavement. They said “our reasoning is like a lesson”; that you had “divided the Supreme Court.”

They couldn’t say that a bird with a broken wing needs clemency.

We know your murderers; they are the ones who loaded the gun.

 

“To cook”, to leave hungry, naked and vulnerable is the thing that the COSMIC tradition of this country knows best. They left this job to nobody. With their ability to plot and rudeness they blinded, deafened and silenced themselves.

They cleared all the obstacles and got everything ready for the bloody day.

They did their job perfectly. And the part they couldn’t do, they left for after the murder. They were that arrogant, they were that flagrant.

We know your murderers; they are the ones who targeted and ambushed you.

 

It is not worth talking about the ones who enjoy this bloody feast. They are being fed physically in the prison and mentally in court.

Because they are not aware of the fact that they are “victims”, they think the pulp they eat is an offering.

In every religion and language of the world, the one who hits from behind is “JUDAS”.

We know your murderers: they are the ones who pulled the trigger.

 

We, the ones who do not shout “where is my share”, scream at the villains.

You are all prime murderers! We know you all!

                                       

My fellow friends!

It is not just Hrant who fell at this spot.

It is our honor, it is our dignity and our self-respect that also fell.

 

Not to consider this as honor means being unaware of honor.

Not to consider this as dignity means having no dignity.

Now that we know the murderers,

It is time to expose the murderers and their accomplices.

Long live human dignity.

Long live the honorable brotherhood of people of the world

“This is a weird country. It is so weird that in this country, three years after his father’s assassination, his son feels embarrassed to cry after him. In this country, very recently, 13 bullets fired by the state were found in the body of a 12-year old. In this country, one cannot cry for his father. In this country, pain is plentiful. It has been three years already, yet we still feel the need to speak out. In fact, I do not feel like speaking much.

Where are we now at the end of these three years? This is a weird country. Three years ago, on the worst day of my life, as I was weeping right here for my father, full of sorrow and anger, you added the feeling of surprise to this emotional turmoil. What kind of a country is this? How did you manage to make me feel surprised in the midst of all that pain? A very weird country indeed…This happened thanks to you, three years ago. Otherwise, frankly speaking, I had no trust in the justice of this country. But thanks to you, I saw a ray of hope. Three years ago, I was hoping that, together with you, I would be able to account for what my father had to endure in the last three years of his life. Three years later, we now have three more years that need to be accounted for. What has happened in the past three years? What has happened for the sake of justice?

I have revisited the media. The story that was mostly covered by the media [about the murder case] was how these three kids made fun of our family and the court during the hearings. It made such big news. I was not here at that time. Now, we have to ask: Were those kids alone when my father was murdered three years ago? Were those kids alone as they made fun of us for the last three years?

My father penned an article three days before he was killed. He wrote, ‘I was summoned to the Governor’s office. Along with two intelligence officers, they tried to put me in my place’. We asked the court a simple question: ‘Who are these two people? Request information from the Governor’s office.’ The Court decided to ask this question to the Governor’s office and requested information. What was the response of the Governor’s office? It made up of a story of one and half pages. The Court asked the following: ‘Who are these two people?’. As simple as that. How did the Governor’s office respond? It made up of a story of one and half pages. Didn’t the Governor’s office ridicule the Court? Was it only those three kids that made fun of [the Court]?  Our lawyers gave a second petition to the Court: ‘They did not provide the answer to your question. Request this again’. The Court said, ‘No, they did provide the answer, there is no need to make a new request’. Didn’t the Court make fun of us? What are we talking about here? I tell you what, we acted as witnesses. His family acted as witnesses. He himself wrote about the threat explicitly: ‘They threatened me’. Who is a Governor? Isn’t it the man of the state in Istanbul?

I am well aware that I am doing a little wrong here. I do not want some of our friends to draw wrongful conclusions from my rage, anger and pain, and then go berserk and break glass and windows. Boo to them. For I also do understand them. I myself want to break all the glass and windows of this world, starting from the security glass of Agos. I want to smash them. There is a bust of my father. I do want to crush and wreck it. I do not like busts, I do like the people.

But, no…Are we going to break windows and glass? Three years ago, you showed us how this is done properly. And you have continued to show us in the last three years. What really matters is to keep the crowd and to keep solemn. Because the state can control and manage it all, all that breaking. But it cannot control and manage you. Three years ago, it could not contain you, out of fear.

There is one last thing I have to share. Supposedly, this is something many of you already know… But I am not quite sure who really knows this. In this country, one day, the so-called ‘Operation Cage Action Plan’ was revealed. Within this plot, there was a mention of a ‘Hrant Dink Operation’. Does everyone in this country know about this? Have all media outlets covered this? Does this plan only cover the Hrant Dink Operation? The plan also talks about spreading fear amongst non-Muslims. Tirelessly, my father kept explaining a ruling by the Court of Cassation. There was a court case against a book about 1915 and the Genocide. The Court held that the book was ‘objectionable’. The decision was appealed to the Court of Cassation. The Court of Cassation ruled that ‘There are not enough Armenians left in the country to be provoked’. My father kept talking about this. This is so grave! In this country, a hundred years ago, we were 20 percent of the population; today we are not even a thousandth…A hundred years ago we were prey, today we are bait.”