“Rakel Dink rebelled against an ingrained sense of family tradition when she declared that she would marry Hrant Dink, the Turkish-Armenian journalist slain Jan. 19, 2007, according to one of the widow’s stepsisters,” Hurriyet Daily News & Economic Review reports.

“We were younger than Rakel, but at the Armenian children’s camp in Tuzla we saw the love of my big sister Rakel and ‘aghparig’ (brother) Hrant. But my father was not aware of the situation. When he and the family elders learned about Rakel and Hrant’s love, he raised all hell,” Yerchanik Mungan, Rakel Dink’s stepsister and a member of the formerly powerful Varto (Kurdish), or Vartan (Armenian), clan from Southeast Anatolia, told the daily.

“Recounting the efforts Rakel Dink and Hrant Dink, who later became the editor-in-chief of daily Agos until his killing four years ago, made to marry, Mungan said the 82nd Armenian Patriarch of Turkish Armenians, Shinorhk Kalustyan, mediated and eventually convinced Rakel’s father, Siamant Aga, to reluctantly accept the marriage,” the daily says.

“Still, he demanded a bridewealth for his daughter of about 20,000 Turkish Liras – an astronomical sum, she said. “Although the patriarch said, ‘We don’t have such a custom,’ my father insisted on it and they agreed on 6,000 Turkish Liras,” the source reports.

“Siament Aga eventually returned the money to Hrant Dink. “His only aim was to make it more difficult for Hrant, so he demanded money. When he realized that he could not succeed in it, my father returned the money, saying, ‘Spend this on your wedding, the daily quotes Yerchanik Mungan.

“Rakel was likely the first bride to be given to a man from outside the Varto clan, Yerchanik Mungan said, adding that the clan married within itself despite the practice being impermissible in Christianity,” the daily reads.