TURKEY:Tens of thousands of people marched through Istanbul in a funeral procession for the slain Turkish-Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink, whose murder has sparked an outcry over rising nationalism in Turkey.
Up to 50,000 mourners gathered in front of the office of Dink's newspaper, Agos, where he was shot dead last Friday by a 17-year-old high-school dropout.
"You have left your loved ones, your children and your grandchildren, but you did not leave your country," Dink's wife, Rakel, said as she stood by her husband's coffin before the cortege set out on the five-mile walk to Meryem Ana church on the other side of the old city.
"Whoever the killer was, I know he was once a baby," she added, her voice breaking. "Unless we can question how this baby grew into a murderer, we cannot achieve anything."
At the time of his death, Dink was being prosecuted for openly criticising the Turkish state's refusal to discuss what happened to at least 600,000 Ottoman Armenians killed in 1915.
Suspected gunman Ogun Samast, who was arrested on Saturday, reportedly told interrogators that Dink's writings provoked him to commit murder.
Though Dink made no secret of the fact that he considered the events of 1915 genocide, he always described his main aim as helping to bring about reconciliation between Armenians and Turks. To an extent he achieved that in his death. Despite having no diplomatic ties with neighbouring Armenia, Armenian officials were invited to join their Turkish counterparts for the funeral.
Turkey's government has also signalled its willingness to change an article of its criminal code that makes "insulting Turkishness" a crime, something it had refused to do before despite heavy pressure from Brussels.
Among the marchers, though, the mood was more sombre.
"If we can at least get the government to get rid of this law, that will be a start," said Oktay Durukan. "And I'd like to think the BBC was right this morning when it said Turkey was mourning Hrant Dink, but I'm not sure it's true."
Waiting for Dink's body to be transferred from the church to the shared Greek and Armenian graveyard at Balikli, on the Marmara sea, one woman said that only outside pressure would keep the momentum going. "We've been calling for change in this country for decades, and almost nothing has happened," she said, declining to give her name.
"I don't know," countered Ege Edemer, a 29-year-old translator.
"Can you remember the last time so many people gathered in support of freedom of expression?"