This year, for our annual event on January 19 commemorating the 2007 assassination of Hrant Dink, Armenian Institute is honoured to be joined by Garo Paylan, Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) member of parliament representing Diyarbakir. Mr Paylan will discuss the issue of hate speech in today’s Turkey, and how this enables both everyday and extreme violence against Armenians and other oppressed identities. The issue of hate speech opens the broader question of Armenians’ position in Turkey today, and the role they can play in the struggle for democratisation and dignity for all Turkey’s peoples.
Ahead of our event, we’d like to share two films about Hrant Dink.
The first film, Hrant Dink, Heart Of Two Nations is the only informal self-portrait of the editor and activist Hrant Dink speaking in Armenian about his life and struggle for justice and human rights for Armenians and other oppressed groups living in Turkey. Forty days after he was gunned down in Istanbul, Turkey, on 19 January 2007 he appeared in the video in conversation with Nouritza Matossian screened In Memoriam in London. The award winning documentary is a uniquely revealing and courageous account foreshadowing his death.
The second is the intense and poignant System Memory Too Low Words, shared by Hrant Dink Foundation. The film ‘System Memory Too Low For Words’ devised and produced by Ümit Kıvanç, which transforms Hrant Dink’s words to color, shape and sound, lays before us the ‘errors’ in the ‘system’ which did not allow space for Hrant Dink and his words. You can watch the film to witness Hrant Dink’s passion which made him a target, and to hear from his own voice his dreams for Turkey and the world in these tumultuous days.