Assassination

These are the flower sellers on Taksim Square in Istanbul, where I spent the afternoon with an old friend. When we returned to the hotel we saw on the news that a well known Turkish-Armenian intellectual and newspaper writer had just been assassinated on the street in Taksim in broad daylight. My friend, who happens to be Kurdish and very left leaning, explained that the writer was outspoken on the Armenian genocide question. The tv images showed him in his study filled with books and art. He took three bullets to the head.