Park on Istanbul's islands named in Hrant Dink's honor

Local authorities on Istanbul’s Princes’ Islands have named a playground in honor of Hrant Dink – slain Armenian-Turkish journalist and former Chief Editor of the bilingual weekly Agos.

The park becomes the first public space in Turkey to be officially given the name to Hrant Dink.

According to Hurriyet Daily News, the unanimous decision, unveiled Saturday, was approved by both the ruling Justice and Development Party and the main opposition despite the tension between the parties in the run-up to Sunday’s constitutional referendum.

“Here we are remembering a friend of ours, an island-lover, a precious and important man,” Adalar Municipality Mayor Mustafa Farsakoglu said at a ceremony dedicating the park Saturday on Kinaliada, one of the Princes’ Islands.

Municipal authorities decided to name the park after Dink, a Turkish journalist of Armenian origin murdered in 2007, in a unanimous decision approved by the opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, which controls the municipality, the ruling party and independent members of the municipal assembly.

Addressing the crowd, the journalist’s widow, Rakel Dink, said she wanted everyone who saw the sign bearing the park’s name to remember the insults and slanders Hrant Dink was subjected to when he was alive. She added that racism and discrimination were responsible for his death. “Hrant used to say, ‘My weapon is my sincerity’,” Rakel Dink said. “I want you to remember this sincere man.”

Sounding another mournful note, publisher and human-rights activist Ragip Zarakolu said he wished there had never been a reason to give Dink’s name to a park.

“Let us remember Hrant as a person. May his name not be left only on signboards, and let us not forget who he is,” Zarakolu said, criticizing the lack of progress by the “so-called judiciary” in the ongoing murder trial.

Dink’s family and friends have been critical of the conduct of the trial, saying it has not gone further than revealing the triggerman and has failed to prosecute the alleged masterminds behind the assassination plot.