"I am an Armenian of Turkey, and a good Turkish citizen. I believe in the republic, in fact I would like it to become stronger and more democratic. I don't want my country to be divided, but I want all the citizens to be able to live fully and contribute their diversity to this society – as a source of richness."

– (Hrant Dink, 2006)

Hrant Dink (1954 – 2007) was born in Malatya, a city in the eastern Anatolian region of Turkey. At the age of seven he moved to Istanbul, where he spent the rest of his life. He received his early education in Armenian community and boarding schools, later going on to study in the zoology and philosophy departments at the university of Istanbul. After graduating he pursued a career as a journalist and activist for Armenian civil rights in Turkey.

From a young age he was aware of the taboo subject of the "Armenian issue": "We all have an intuition about something broken in the past. It's in our genetic code. Each Armenian family has losses that go back to the time when survivors were scattered all over the world."

He describes his experience growing up with both Turkish and Armenian identity as: "I didn't know what it meant to be Turkish or Armenian. At school in Istanbul, I recited the Turkish credo every morning, but I was also told I should preserve my Armenian identity. I never came across my own name in school books – only Turkish names."

Years later as a teenager, he would hear "the word 'Armenian' used as a swearword." As an adult he would face direct discrimination: "I saw high-court decisions that referred to Armenians as 'foreigners living in Turkey'. The Armenian orphanage that I worked so hard to establish was confiscated by the state."

Despite this, he refused to leave Turkey, and instead campaigned hard to promote better relations between the Turkish and Armenian communities:

"My identity was always other, and often belittled. I saw again and again that I was different. Many people who were like me were leaving this country, but I didn't want to leave – I wanted to stay and fight for what I thought was right."

In 1996 he founded, became editor-in-chief and columnist of Agos (translation: "ploughed furrow"), an Istanbul-based weekly newspaper published in both Armenian and Turkish. It was briefly suspended in 2001.

In April 2004 he gave a speech at the UN Commission on Human Rights on freedom of expression in Turkey. He identified many continuing problems but his words had a positive note:

"the tendency of many Turkish intellectuals to learn Armenian history, problems and culture, to discuss them and to see Armenian community as a richness for the country, gives hope for the future by creating a sound demand right from the bottom to the top."

In recent years Hrant was charged a number of times under the strict Turkish penal code for "denigrating Turkey" and "insulting Turkish identity". His cases included a trial on 28 April, 2005 about a speech he gave at a human rights and minorities conference in 2002, a conviction on 7 October, 2005 to a six-month suspended sentence for an article on the Armenian diaspora published in Agos, an interview given to the Reuters news agency on 14 July, 2006 where he spoke candidly about his opinions on the events of 1915.

Of his October 2005 conviction he said:

"I was found guilty of racism. How can this be? All my life I have struggled against ethnic discrimination and racism. I would never belittle Turkishness or Armenianness. I wouldn't allow anyone else to do it, either."

It is reported that on 10 January he wrote an article for Agos expressing his worry at the large number of threatening letters and emails he was receiving and his dismay at the lack of concern shown by the Istanbul police.

He was killed on 19 January by an unidentified gunman outside the central-Istanbul offices of Agos.

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Hrant Dink wrote two articles for openDemocracy:

"The water finds its crack: an Armenian in Turkey" (13 December, 2005)

"Orhan Pamuk's epic journey" (16 October, 2006)