Today is Hrant Dink’s birthday.
If he had not been murdered, he would have been 58 years old. We would have been able to look at his smiling face, into his eyes that reflected his goodness, and enjoy his inner beauty not from photographs but in the flesh.
It wasn’t meant to be. He never gave up his struggle for his ideals, for peace and for brotherhood. His prize was a bullet fired from behind.
The Hrant Dink Foundation has been granting an award in his name for four years to encourage the struggle for ideals for all people, as Hrant did at the cost of his life. This prize is given every year to two individuals, institutions or groups, one from Turkey and one from abroad, who have worked for a world free of discrimination, racism and violence, for a freer, more just world, who take individual risks for these ideals, who try to rock paradigms, who use the language of peace, and who, while doing all this, inspire and gives hope to people on the road to continuing their struggles.
I wish we had stood by Hrant in time and not left him alone.
MEHMET ALİ BİRAND/Hurriyet Daily news
