Today, in Istanbul, a prominent intellectual and prolific journalist was gunned down. Hrant Dink was the editor of the Agos newspaper, which is a bilingual publication in Turkish and Armenian, and the most prominent figure attempting to begin a serious local debate about "the Armenian question." If Turkey ever once stood a chance to convince the world that what happened between the 1880s and 1920s was actually a civil war or bi-partisan conflict (and there is a small amount of evidence supporting this view), this chance has been lost today.

For more on Hrant Dink:
Turkish: tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hrant_Dink
English: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hrant_Dink

Journalists live a risky life here. Ugur Mumcu is another prominent writer who was assassinated, killed by a car bomb in 1993:
tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/U%C4%9Fur_Mumcu

And many bombs have been planted in and around newspaper offices in the past few years.

Anyway, my sympathies go to the family, friends, and co-workers of Hrant, a passionate lover of Turks and Turkey who was killed today in front of his newspaper office.