Cem Özdemir delivers his keynote speech honouring Hrant Dink and his legacy (Photo: Harout Kassabian)
TORONTO, Canada—Over 600 people gathered in the Armenian Community Centre of Toronto on January 22, 2017 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the assassination of Hrant Dink, prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist and Editor-in-Chief of the bilingual Agos newspaper.
Dink was assassinated on January 19, 2007, in front of his newspaper’s office in Istanbul, triggering an unprecedented surge of solidarity and pro-democracy activism in Turkey after more than 100,000 people attended his funeral. Hrant Dink’s assassination is now memorialized in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg.
The keynote speaker was Cem Özdemir, a German parliamentarian of Turkish descent and the current co-chair of the German Greens Alliance Party. Özdemir spearheaded the resolution in the German Bundestag to formally classify the 1915-1923 massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide.
The distinguished guests of the afternoon (Photo: Harout Kassabian)
Prominent politicians, diplomats and public figures were also in attendance for the commemoration, including the Premier of Ontario, Honorable Kathleen Wynne, Consul General Peter Fahrenholtz of the German Consulate in Toronto, famed Canadian-Armenian director Atom Egoyan, as well as local members of the Canadian Parliament and Ontario Legislature.
In his keynote address, Özdemir spoke of Hrant Dink’s bravery and his continued legacy.
“Because of Hrant, Armenians in Turkey talk about the Armenian Genocide. Because of Hrant, Turks who have never heard about the Armenian Genocide talk about the Armenian Genocide. People afterwards started to question what they had learned,â€
