Agos
This article is about a Turkish-Armenian weekly newspaper; for other meanings, see Agos (disambiguation).
Agos (Armenian Ակոս) is Turkey's first Turkish-Armenian weekly newspaper. It is published bilingually in Armenian and Turkish in Istanbul. Agos was founded by Luiz Bakar, Hrant Dink, Harutyun Şeşetyan and Anna Turay. The first issue was published on April 5, 1996.
The co-founder and editor of Agos, Hrant Dink, was shot dead while leaving the newspaper building on 19 January 2007 after ultranational Turkish circles had called him a traitor to the Turkish Republic and threatened him with death several times.
The circulation of Agos is about 5000, but in the months after Dink's assassination it was over 10,000 in the meantime.
The newspaper is a thorn in the side of Turkish ultra-nationalists, and editors and journalists have frequently been threatened. In series of articles, the paper reported on disappeared testimonies of Armenian culture such as churches, villages and schools in Anatolia, thus indirectly addressing the Armenian genocide, which is denied by the Turkish state. As early as late February 2004, ultranationalist Turks demonstrated outside the editorial building, chanting, "Either you love this country or you leave it." The newspaper had mentioned that Ataturk's first adopted daughter might have been Armenian. The Agos journalists, and Hrant Dink in particular, then received massive death threats.
Until his murder, Dink had been charged several times, always on the basis of Section 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which criminalises "insulting Turkishness" and which the EU has long been calling for to be abolished, and had already been convicted once with final effect.
Following Dink's assassination, the Public Prosecutor's Office launched new investigations against Agos magazine for "insulting Turkishness," with Agos columnist Aydın Engin answering to the Public Prosecutor's Office this time.
In 2007, Agos was awarded the Hermann Kesten Medal of the P.E.N. Centre Germany in honour of its former editor Hrant Dink.
Staff
Editor-in-Chief
- Hrant Dink (April 1996 - January 2007)
- Etyen Mahçupyan (January 2007 - May 2010)
- Rober Koptaş (June 2010 - January 2015)
- Yetvart Danzikyan (since February 2015)
Known (former) authors
- Aydın Engin
- Markar Esayan
- Karin Karakaşlı
- Baskın Oran
See also
- Armenians in Turkey
- Armenians in Istanbul
- List of Turkish newspapers
