Dink marriage flew in face of tradition, stepsister says

Monday, January 17, 2011

VERCİHAN ZİFLİOĞLU

MARSEILLE - Hürriyet Daily News

Rakel Dink rebelled against an ingrained sense of family tradition when she declared that she would marry Hrant Dink, the Turkish-Armenian journalist slain Jan. 19, 2007, according to one of the widow’s stepsisters.

“We were younger than Rakel, but at the [Armenian children’s] camp in Tuzla we saw the love of my big sister Rakel and ‘aghparig’ (brother) Hrant. But my father was not aware of the situation. When he and the [family] elders learned about Rakel and Hrant’s love, he raised all hell,” Yerchanik Mungan, Rakel Dink’s stepsister and a member of the formerly powerful Varto (Kurdish), or Vartan (Armenian), clan from Southeast Anatolia, recently told the Hürriyet Daily News & Econonic Review.

Recounting the efforts Rakel Dink and Hrant Dink, who later became the editor-in-chief of daily Agos until his killing four years ago, made to marry, Mungan said the 82nd Armenian Patriarch of Turkish Armenians, Shinorhk Kalustyan, mediated and eventually convinced Rakel’s father, Siamant Ağa, to reluctantly accept the marriage.

Still, he demanded a bridewealth for his daughter of about 20,000 Turkish Liras – an astronomical sum, she said. “Although the patriarch said, ‘We don’t have such a custom,’ my father insisted on it and they agreed on 6,000 Turkish Liras.”

Siament Ağa eventually returned the money to Hrant Dink, Yerchanik Mungan said. “His only aim was to make it more difficult for Hrant, so he demanded money. When he realized that he could not succeed in it, my father returned the money, saying, ‘Spend this on your wedding.’”

Rakel was likely the first bride to be given to a man from outside the Varto clan, Yerchanik Mungan said, adding that the clan married within itself despite the practice being impermissible in Christianity.

“I am not as radical as my big sister Rakel,” she said, noting she married her cousin, Mesrop Mungan.

Yerchanik Mungan is Siament Ağa’s daughter from his second wife. She began living in the same household as Rakel when the latter’s mother left the house while Siament Ağa took another wife. In all, 13 children were raised in the house. “Rakel was the apple of my father’s eye,” Mungan said.

Patriarch Kalustyan had found the remnants of the Varto members living in Silopi and Cizre in the southeastern province of Şırnak in the 1960s.

Seeking to connect them to Armenian culture, he sought to convince the clan to move to Istanbul, but the members did not want to abandon their land, although Siament Ağa and other elders were eventually persuaded to send their children for education in the city. The offspring were brought to Istanbul gradually, with Rakel Dink in the second group and Yerchanik in the third. “We came together in the Tuzla camp,” she said.

Wife devastated by killing

Rakel Dink and Hrant Dink’s love was just like in fairy tales, according to Mungan. “When Hrant was killed, they in fact killed two people,” she said, adding that the two could not live without each other. “The only thing that keeps Rakel alive is her faith in God. Without it, she couldn’t survive a life without Hrant.”

Yerchanik Mungan said they were devastated on Jan. 19, 2007 when they received news that Hrant Dink had been gunned down outside his newspaper’s offices in Istanbul’s Şişli district.

“I was driving. They called me and asked me to come home,” said Yerchanik Mungan. “I had a sense that something was wrong, but I couldn’t accept what I heard upon my return. Hrant couldn’t have died. It was impossible.”

Mesrop Mungan said he could never forget that day. “I’ve known Rakel and Hrant since my childhood. As I heard the news, I felt deep pain inside.”

‘I will die where I was born’

Both Mungans said the real perpetrators of Hrant Dink’s killing can never be found.

Asked whether she thought the journalist had become a target, Yerchanik Mungan said: “They should’ve come here, near us. But Hrant said, ‘I will die where I was born.’ If my father were alive, he would have died when he learned about the murder. We, as 13 siblings, are trying to not let Rakel feel alone.”

Yerchanik Mungan said she could not accept the journalist’s death on the day of the killing and would never be able to do so in the future either. “He still lives in Istanbul next to my dear Rakel.”

“We lost a heart; a heart that was beating with friendship and love,” Mesrop Mungan said.