REVIEW
MUSUEM
“Twenty three and a half”
Hrant Dink Site of
Memory
Oriol López Badell
Historian, EUROM coordinator
I
n June 2019, Istanbul welcomed a new site of memory very close to Taksim Square, the
epicentre of contemporary Turkey’s pro-democracy demonstrations. The venue, which
bears the enigmatic name of “Twenty three and a half”, is dedicated to the figure of
the Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who was assassinated in 2007 in front of
the building that now houses his memorial. The venue’s space, which is relatively small,
modern and ingeniously designed, occupies the former offices of the newspaper Agos, a
prominent publication for Turkey’s Armenian community, where Dink served as editor-in-
chief. Agos was founded in 1996 as a newspaper whose various subjects included pursuing
investigations into the conflicts of the past, such as the Armenian genocide instigated by
the Turkish government in 1915. The paper’s articles often sparked controversy among the
more conservative sectors of Turkish society and eventually became a pretext for death
threats against its founder, Dink.
The turning point came in 2004 when Dink published an article revealing that the
adopted child of Kemal Atatürk, who is regarded as the father of modern Turkey, was an
Armenian orphan. Based on statements from relatives of the girl, the article brought to light
that Atatürk’s daughter, Sabiha Gökçen, a national symbol and a role model for Turkish
women, had been adopted from an orphanage in Armenia. The news was taken as an
affront by a large part of the population. A few days later, the deputy governor of Istanbul
summoned Dink and demanded that he “be careful” with what he published, and a number
of anti-Dink protests took place outside the Agos newspaper offices. The courts issued a
stream of threats and rulings until three years later, on 19 January 2007, a seventeen-year-
old man made an arrangement ostensibly to meet with Dink and then shot him to death.
Since then, there have been a host of initiatives to remember Dink: every year on the
anniversary of his assassination, thousands of people gather in front of the newspaper’s
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Observing Memories
ISSUE 3