Death of Hrant Dink

I have created this blog to discuss and refine my conceptions of the world, to "see the world as it is" as astronomer/international policy expert Chris Chyba once pleaded at a Cornell colloquium.

This may be an odd first post for my blog, but I think the death of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink is a worthy one. A brief bio appears on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hrant_Dink) and armeniapedia (http://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=Hrant_Dink). There is also a facebook group discussing Mr. Dink's death (http://cornell.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2228814238&ref=nf).

I am neither Armenian nor Turkish. I am simply a man who by circumstance and education came to learn about Europe and appreciate the vision that took a continent asunder and built something more peaceful and humane.

I have been studying speeches for Toastmasters. In recognition of Martin Luther King's birthday, I read his sermon "I've Been To The Mountaintop", given the night before he was assassinated. In it he says that if the Almighty gave him the opportunity to live at any time, he would choose to live in his present, a few years past the midpoint of the 20th century.

"Now that's a strange statement to make because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick, trouble is in the land, confusion all around. That's a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars."

Even astronomers seek the end of night and greet dawn with passion.

The next day, Robert Kennedy was on his way to a political rally in Indianapolis when he heard about MLK's assassination. He ignored the warnings of his staffers and continued to the rally. When he looked out at the crowd of mostly poor urban African-Americans, he realized that they did not yet know that King was dead. He broke the news to them in halting, pained, impromptu remarks: (http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/rfkonmlkdeath.html; the linked page plays a piece of "Mad World" performed by Sacre for the Donnie Darko soundtrack.
). At one point he quotes Aeschylus, a Greek poet, by saying,

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.

I doubt Robert was thinking about the relevance of Aeschylus to this particular audience. I think that he forgot politics for a brief moment and betrayed his privileged upbringing. Yet he also revealed to that crowd his grief, his anguish, for a man with whom his relationship evolved from mutual distrust to deep friendship and shared vision.

This speech inevitably leads to an examination of the eulogy for Robert F. Kennedy, read by his brother Ted, but largely in his own words. The phrase from his speech to South African students on the Day of Affirmation is inscribed as his epitaph: "Every time a man strikes out against injustice, he brings forth a tiny ripple of hope..."

Hrant Dink was such a man. My knowledge of him started this evening, but in the coming days, through conversations and readings, I will come to know a man who studied science, then studied literature to find his calling, his voice, his mission in newsprint and nonviolent resistance to the burial of past unmourned, or rights promised, but unrealized.

In the coming days I may learn of his personal failing, of errors in judgment, of a lack of objectivity (though by all accounts it was his balanced editorials and deep desire for reconciliation, not retribution or reparation, for nations and peoples.

In the coming days analysts will explore the impact of his death on the prospects of the accession of Turkey to the European Union. Politicians within the European Parliament may well use this to further their own domestic agendas by using his death to reinforce reasons - reasonable and outlandish - why Turkey should not join Europe. In the coming days some will compare his assassination to that of Rafik Hariri, and pontificate on whether the event will similarly lead to the promise of democratic reforms and a peaceful revolution within Turkey, and to the extent that such a revolution would realize ultimate success.

I have neither the professional competence nor the appetite to speculate on the political and economic consequences of the death of one man. I will content myself with listening to more learned individuals, here and around the world, who grapple with greater grief and torment that I may share, much diluted, but can never fully understand.

I hope that the Turkish state, in recognition of his service to the people - if not the country - will permit Dink to be interred on Turkish soil, not to lay claim to him as the ruling elite's own, but instead to recognize that he belongs to the people, that out of his death - and especially his life - should come symbol and substance of contemplation and reform. It is one of many blessings of America that there is no law against insulting "Americanness" - our jails, I fear, are crowded enough. Those of us who love the freedom of the newsprint, who have had our hands dirtied by its filmy ink, who have defended the freedom of the press, even if only in the context of a high school paper, can perhaps appreciate this man and his heart, if not his politics.

My prayers to his family, to the Turkish and Armenian nations and peoples, and to others around the world who are touched by his death or life.