Denying the Holocaust has been called "memory assassination" (see this earlier story on denial). The recent killing of Hrant Dink in Turkey is another, more literal, kind of memory murder. He was gunned down in front of his office in Istanbul. BBC is now reporting an arrest of a suspect.

Dink was editor of the Armenian-Turkish language weekly Agos in Istanbul. At the time of his murder, he was awaiting trial for having insulted the Turkish state. In October of last year, he had called certain aspects of the classroom oath taken every morning by children in Turkey and the Turkish national anthem (a reference to "race") into question. He is known for - and in the German media his murder is constantly connected with - repeatedly drawing attention to the Armenian genocide of 1915. He was given a six-month suspended sentence for publishing an article on it in his paper. In Turkey, the mass murder of Armenians is officially considered part of a civil war in the Ottoman Empire. Differences on how to describe, label and remember the events of 1915-1917 are also a bone of contention between the EU and Turkey, the EU insisting the Turkey come clear on its history. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians died during what was a deliberate campaign of murder and mass expulsion carried out initially near the Russian front, but later throughout eastern Anatolia.

Dink's killing could be considered a form of punishing a whistle blower, part of an effort that extends well into the Turkish mainstream and into Turkish law, to keep certain historical memories considered inconvenient or damaging erased.