The Armenians of Turkey and the newspaper that turned their voice public

Agos has done more than report on a community shaped by loss but has helped sustain a space in which Armenians could speak and be heard. Happy 30th birthday.

The headline for Agos’s 30th anniversary reads: “We are 30, Ahparig (a term of endearment in Armenian, meaning ‘brother’).”

The newspaper I am holding does not move me simply because it has managed to remain a printed paper. It is the fact that it has endured, one way or another, in a harsh climate where the cold can be biting, the heat suffocating, and spring only rarely shows its face.

There is an irony here that is hard to ignore. The founding editor of this paper I hold in my hands is among those writers of modern Turkey who were taken by a brutal assassination. Yet its presence does not recall that violence so much as it instils a sense of assurance.

Much of that comes, of course, from the resilience and the peaceful character of Hrant Dink - Hrant abi - , the dear elder colleague who was murdered in 2007 in the very orbit of this newspaper, Agos. It also comes from the Agos team who treated his death as a grave turning point and chose to carry on with the same stubborn resolve.

Yetv…