Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam > Blaise Pascal Instituut > Girard Studiekring > COV&R 2007 > Abstracts Papers 

Eşref Aksu

Where to Locate Tolerance? Reflections on the Societal Responses to Hrant Dink's Assassination

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ABSTRACT

Hrant Dink, a leading Turkish-Armenian journalist, was assassinated on 19 January 2007 in front his newspaper office in Istanbul. This incident sparked mass protests - to the surprise of many observers both at home and abroad - from large segments of the Turkish society. It also brought to the forefront, once again, the well-known and long-standing "Armenian question", albeit indirectly. 

Two aspects of Rene Girard's thought seem to offer useful insights into this phenomenon. The familiar idea of "scapegoat mechanism" is, of course, relevant to the question on hand. Perhaps more refreshingly, however, the notion of "double transference" is certainly worth thinking about in this context, because the broad range of views expressed following Dink's death may indeed be pointing at the direction of an innocent victim who comes to symbolise both good and evil at once, acquiring a double role as both the instigator and the resolver of a crisis. If this observation is accurate, we may need to re-think the entire question of societal tolerance, and explore its possible implications for especially vulnerable segments of the society.


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