Slain Armenian-Turkish journalist is buried

(24 Jan 2007)
1. Various of security officials blocking road outside church
2. Close-up of flowers
3. Mourners
4. Various of coffin being carried
5. Various of mourners
6. Close-up of portrait of murdered journalist, Hrant Dink, pan to cross
7. Mourners throwing flowers
8. Close-up of mourner's face
9. Various of mourners
10. Armenian Orthodox priests
11. Various of mourners
12. Various of gathering
STORYLINE:
Thousands of people gathered at an orthodox church in Istanbul on Tuesday for the funeral of a murdered ethnic Armenian journalist who had angered Turkish nationalists - in an extraordinary outpouring of support for a more liberal Turkey where people are not killed for their ideas.
Hrant Dink - who was gunned down on Friday outside his newspaper Agos in broad daylight - had been outspoken in labelling the mass killings of Armenians in the last days of the Ottoman Empire as genocide.
Many historians and some countries have also termed the mass deaths and expulsion of Armenians as the 20th century's first genocide.
But amid the grieving, there were signs his funeral may become a catalyst for melting the antagonism between Turks and the dwindling ethnic Armenian minority.
The crowds marched along an eight-kilometre (five-mile) route from Agos to an Armenian Orthodox church, in one of the biggest funerals ever held in Istanbul.
Many carried placards that read: "We are all Hrant Dinks" and "Murderer 301" - a reference to the freedom-curbing Turkish law that was used to prosecute Dink and others on charges of insulting "Turkishness."
52-year-old Dink, the bilingual Agos newspaper's editor, sought to encourage reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia.
But he chose a dangerous path by making public statements about the mass killings of Armenians by Turks in the early 20th century, which remains one of the nation's most divisive issues.
On several occasions, Dink expressed his view that the killings amounted to genocide.
Such statements enrage nationalists who vehemently insist that there was bloodshed on both sides during the tumultuous period surrounding the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
The remarks also landed him in court and prompted numerous death threats.
Police are questioning seven suspects, including a teenager, Ogun Samast, who authorities say has confessed to shooting Dink, and Yasin Hayal, a nationalist militant convicted in a 2004 bomb attack at a McDonald's restaurant.
Hayal has confessed to inciting the slaying and providing a gun and money to the teenager, according to police.

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