ISTANBUL. – Tens of thousands took to the streets in Istanbul, on Thursday, to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the passing of Hrant Dink—the founder and former chief editor of Istanbul’s Agos Armenian weekly, who was killed on January 19, 2007—and to protest the Turkish court’s recent shameful ruling on Dink’s murder case. 

The commemoration event brought together numerous Turkish journalists, politicians, MPs, and others. The family members of Sevag Balikci—the Istanbul Armenian who was killed, on April 24, 2011, in a military unit while serving in the Turkish army—were also present. And the Turkish writer Vedat Turkal held, on a wheelchair, a sign that read: “We are all Hrant, we are all Armenian,” NTV News Agency of Turkey informed.           

In his words, MP Sirri Sureyya Onder criticized the court’s ruling on Hrant Dink’s murder case and the state’s conduct, noting that the state took the responsibility for Dink’s killing upon its shoulders, and therefore Dink’s killer is the state.