ARAS PUBLISHING

Aras Publishing is based out of the ground floor of Hidivyal Palace, located at the top of the Kumbaracı Hill on the left-hand side when walking towards Tünel on İstiklal Avenue. Those who started this publishing house on the second floor of the same building in 1993 were Mıgırdiç Margosyan, Yetvart Tovmasyan and Hrant Dink. Dink left the team three years later in order to found the Agos newspaper, which was his dream.

Aras Publishing is one of the rare bilingual publishing houses in Turkey with its books in Turkish and Armenian. Publishing works translated from Armenian as well as those written in Turkish by contemporary Armenian writers, the publishing house thus aims to contribute to building familiarity and a better understanding between people from different cultures living side by side, and to represent and carry on the deep-rooted tradition of Armenian publishing in this millennium. Aras publishes books on Armenian literature, Armenian culture, Armenian history, and on the journey of Armenians within these lands.

At the time Aras was established there were no publishing houses in Armenian. The newspapers Jamanak and Marmara, with their limited staff, would publish books as the need arose, and Belge Publishing House started putting out Turkish translations of Armenian books from French and English as part of its “Marenostrum (“Our Sea”) Series”. Founded in such circumstances for the publication of the works of Armenian writers, Aras has, by the end of 2018, published extensively in various categories such as memoirs, biographies, photography books, essays, studies, cookbooks, storybooks, fiction and history books. The Armenian books coming out of Aras Publishing are in the Western Armenian dialect, spoken by the Armenians of Istanbul and the diaspora, a language declared endangered by UNESCO.

As a publishing house, Aras first came out with Mıgırdiç Margosyan’s Infidel Quarter (Gâvur Mahallesi), a compilation of originally Armenian stories rewritten in Turkish by the author known as one of the last living representatives of Armenian provincial literature. Diyarbakır- born Margosyan’s book, an account not only of Armenians, but also of the Kurds, Assyrians, Yezidis, Turks and Jews of the East, was reprinted in 21 editions.

Qualifying its publishing approach as oriented towards providing “a window onto Armenian literature”, Aras Publishing concentrated on literary works in its first decade. Later on, however, as debates on 1915 became heated it shifted its emphasis to history books treating the events of 100 years ago. Raymond H. Kévorkian and Paul B. Paboudjian’s 1915 Öncesinde Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda Ermeniler (Armenians in the Ottoman Empire Before 1915) stands out among these books contributing to a questioning of the prevailing denialist attitude of society in Turkey with regards to the Armenian genocide. Along with history books, those written by witnesses of the genocide in genres easier for readers to relate to such as memoirs, biographies and fiction also contribute to the incorporation of a suppressed past into public memory.

Another notable work by the publishing house is its reprinting in modern Turkish of Ermeni Edebiyatı Numuneleri (Samples of Armenian Literature), originally published in Ottoman script in 1913. Sarkis Srents had translated from Armenian into Ottoman Turkish and published in the journal Servet-i Fünun (“Wealth of Knowledge”) 14 stories by eight renowned Armenian writers, and had later compiled these into a book with the addition of pieces written by four prominent Ottoman intellectuals. The book stands as a reflection, not of what exists, but of now obsolete Ottoman Turkish, of no longer productive Armenian literature, and of the Western Armenian dialect fast sinking into oblivion.

A publishing house with regular followers and readers, Aras Publishing celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2013 by translating and publishing Kevork B. Bardakjian’s voluminous A Reference Guide to Modern Armenian Literature, 1500-1920.

Palas Hıdivyal, Photograph by Gencer Yurttaş.

Aras Publishing, Photograph by Gençer Yurttaş.

HRANT DİNK's ASSASINATION

(Text by Burcu Bingöllü)

Born on the 15th of September 1954 in Malatya, Hrant Dink came to Istanbul with his family at the age of five and completed his studies here. Concerned that the Armenian community he was part of would suffer due to his active role within leftist politics, he changed his name to “Fırat”4****. He assumed the management of the Tuzla Children’s Camp with his wife Rakel (Yağbasan), whom he met in primary school and later married. After the camp was confiscated by the state on charges of “training Armenian militants”, Dink too was subjected to detention and arrest for his political views.

In the 1990s he wrote in the newspaper Marmara under the pen name Çutak (Arm. for “Violin”). He then became founder, editor-in-chief and lead writer of Agos, which means “furrow – where the seed is ploughed into the ground lush with fertility”, as a newspaper project aiming to both voice the issues of the Armenian community and allow for it to find common ground with Turkey’s larger society. Launched on the 5th of April 1996, Agos became the first newspaper to be published in Turkish and Armenian in Istanbul. The sequence of events leading up to the assassination of Hrant Dink began with a smear campaign targeting him for certain articles and news-pieces published in Agos from 2004 onwards.

Hrant Dink started a series of columns titled “the Armenian identity” on the 7th of November 2003. Spokesperson of the Turkish Orthodox Church, Sevgi Erenerol, filed a complaint against his piece “Free of the Turk” (“Türkten Kurtulmak”) published as part of this series on the 30th of January 2004. Another news article by Hrant Dink titled “Sabiha Hatun’s Secret” (“Sabiha Hatun’un Sırrı”) on the 6th of February 2004 involved claims that Ataturk’s adopted daughter Sabiha Gökçen was of Armenian origin and had relatives in Armenia. When a piece headlined “Sabiha Gökçen or Hatun Sebilciyan?” was run by Hürriyet regarding these allegations on the 21st of February 2004, the General Staff immediately made a statement to the press the very next day using harsh language against Hrant Dink. Dink was then summoned to the Istanbul Governor’s Office on the 25th of February for a meeting with National Intelligence Organization (MİT) officers upon orders of the Undersecretary, a meeting which he defined as a “chastising”.

Hrant Dink commemoration, in front of the Agos newspaper building.

His words “getting rid of the poisoned blood associated with the Turk…” in an article from February 13 under his series on Armenian identity were also decontextualized and made the subject of yet another criminal complaint on charges of “Insulting Turkishness and the Venerable Turkish Nation, Inciting Terrorism and Rebellion, Provocation and Sedition” on the 25th of February 2004. During the trial process in the Şişli 2nd Criminal Court of General Jurisdication, the ultra-nationalist groups protesting Dink outside the courthouse attempted attacks inside as well, and figures such as Kemal Kerinçsiz and Veli Küçük – known to the public from the Ergenekon Case – requested admission as an intervening party. Eventually, the court handed down a six-month prison sentence to Hrant Dink on the 7th of October 2005. The 9th Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Appeals approved this ruling on the 1st of May 2006. Supreme Court Prosecutor Ömer Faruk Eminağaoğlu’s objection to this approval was rejected by majority vote on the 11th of July 2016. Hrant Dink faced added lawsuits due to his statements regarding this ruling on charges of “attempting to influence a fair trial”.

On the 26th of February 2004, a group led by Istanbul Idealist Hearths (“Ülkü Ocakları”) Provincial Chair Levent Temiz gathered in front of Agos, making a statement to the press chanting slogans such as “Love it or Leave it” and “We May Come Overnight All of a Sudden”. On the 3rd of March 2004 another group calling themselves the “Federation to Combat Unfounded Armenian Allegations” (“Asılsız Ermeni İddialarıyla Mücadele Federasyonu”) held a protest outside the newspaper building.

One of the rare instances in which this ultranationalist wave leading up to 2007, resulting in attacks on events related to Armenians and other minorities and making Hrant Dink a target, backfired was when the Press Council issued a warning against Yeniçağ newspaper. The Council stressed that Yeniçağ’s headline on October 9, 2004, that read “Look at that Armenian!” (“Ermeniye Bak”) targeting Hrant Dink in response to a piece of his titled “Farewell” (“Hoş Gidişler Ola”) published in Birgün, could risk inciting violence against the writer.

On the 2nd of February 2006, Dink’s lawyers filed a criminal complaint against a letter sent to Agos under the name Ahmet Demir threatening both himself, his son and Managing Editor Arat Dink, and Publisher Sarkis Seropyan.

A new court case was brought against Hrant Dink, Arat Dink and Sarkis Seropyan on grounds of “insulting Turkishness” in September 2006. This time the issue in question was a news article titled “1 Vote Against 301” (“301’e Karşı 1 Oy”) published in Agos on the 21st of July 2006. The piece included certain excerpts from comments to Reuters by Hrant Dink made on the 14th of July, expressing his opinions regarding the genocide. This court case was to be concluded only after Hrant Dink’s death, on the 11th of October 2007, with one-year prison sentences for Arat Dink and Sarkis Seropyan each.

Hrant Dink was of course aware of this net tightening around him. As of 2005, the very same actors were also making an appearance in cases based on Article 301 of the Penal Code5***** against figures such as Orhan Pamuk, Murat Belge, Hasan Cemal and Elif Şafak. His concluding remarks in his article titled “Why was I chosen as a target?” (“Neden Hedef Seçildim”) published on the 12th of January 2007 had been: “And here I am, on the edge of a cliff once more. There were people after me again, I sensed them. And I knew very well that these weren’t as ordinary and visible as to be limited to the Kerinçsiz crew alone.”

Exactly a week later, come the 19th of January 2007, Hrant Dink, walking out of a bank right next to the Agos editorial office, was shot with three bullets to the head at 14:57. The suspect, Ogün Samast, caught on the security cameras of surrounding workplaces that very day wearing his white cap, was by the evening of the 20th posing for a photograph with police officers in front of a Turkish flag in the Samsun Anti-Terrorism Unit tea room.

The participation of tens of thousands of people in the funeral ceremony that took place on the 23rd of January 2007 served as an indication as to how deeply this blatant assassination, seen coming from a mile away, had impacted people from all walks of life in Turkey. The main slogan of the crowd that day became “We Are All Hrant, We Are All Armenians”.

Trial process

The first trial in the murder case that later came to span a period of 11 years started with 18 defendants on the 20th of April 2007. After 25 hearings involving civilians with links to Ogün Samast, the court concluded on the 17th of January 2012 that – as the then Chief of Istanbul Police Celalettin Cerrah had stated right after the incident – Dink’s homicide was the work of a couple of lads, and not a case of organized crime. Despite the fact that some of the defendants explicitly claimed to have informed both the police and gendarmerie intelligence units of the murder in advance, requests by the attorneys of the Dink family for an investigation of the responsibility of gendarmerie and police officers in both Istanbul and Trabzon were repeatedly denied. As a result of the application made by the Dink family to the European Court of Human Rights before having exhausted domestic remedies, the Court condemned Turkey for its failure to conduct an effective investigation into the role of public officials. With the approval of the 4th Judicial Package, the opportunity for a retrial of cases on which there were such ECtHR rulings arose. At present, having consolidated indictments involving public officials and gendarmerie officers into a single trial, the case is still being heard with 85 defendants – 8 of whom are detained and 10 fugitive – at the Istanbul 14th Heavy Penal Court.