Turkey Armenians wary one year after editor's death

By Thomas Grove

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - One year after Turkish-Armenian writer Hrant Dink was shot dead, Turkey's Armenian community is torn between hoping for better days in the EU candidate nation and moving abroad out of frustration and fear of more attacks.

Dink's murder by an ultra-nationalist gunman outside his Istanbul office on January 19, 2007 stunned Turkey, and his funeral turned into a mass protest against nationalist violence.

But the mood among Istanbul's ethnic Armenians remains jittery as the grim anniversary looms, despite the pledges of solidarity and government promises to fight intolerance.

"Most (Armenians) hesitate to go out and make themselves known ... This is not a time of great hope, it is still a time of danger," said Etyen Mahcupyan, Dink's successor as editor of Agos, a small Turkish and Armenian-language weekly based in Istanbul.

Optimists see violence against Christians as the last gasp of a nationalism that feels threatened by globalization, Turkey's rising prosperity and closer ties with Europe.

Before his murder, Dink had received numerous death threats for articles urging Turkey to accept responsibility for its part in the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks and Kurds in 1915.

His writings also brought him a suspended 6-month jail sentence under a law that makes it a crime to insult Turkish identity. Ankara has failed to amend or scrap the law, condemned by the European Union as a major obstacle to free speech.

Not far from the Agos office, Armenians congregate at a small tea house in a back alley of what was once one of the city's major Armenian quarters. Turkey now has about 60,000 ethnic Armenians, far fewer than in Ottoman times.