If in Washington it is politically awkward to refer to the genocide, it is positively dangerous to do so in Istanbul.

Hrant Dink became the 1,500,001st victim of the Armenian genocide yesterday. An educated and generous journalist and academic - editor of the weekly Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos - he tried to create a dialogue between the two nations to reach a common narrative of the 20th century’s first holocaust. And he paid the price: two bullets into his head and two into his body by an assassin in the streets of Istanbul yesterday afternoon.

However, this is not the first time a shameful act like this one has happened in Istanbul. A couple of years ago, Turkey’s leading author and a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Orhan Pamuk, was put on trial merely for having brought up the subject in a press interview.

‘A million Armenians were killed and nobody but me dares to talk about it.’

Then later, another prominent Turkish novelist, Elif Shafak, was charged with the same offense, for having a character in her novel, ‘The Bastard of Istanbul,’ declare,

‘I am the grandchild of genocide survivors who lost all their relatives at the hands of Turkish butchers in 1915, but I myself have been brainwashed to deny the genocide.’

Another one in this context, Taner Akcam was arrested and sentenced to ten years in prison for spreading propaganda in his new history, ‘A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility.’

This is a frightful blow to Turkey’s surviving Armenian community and a shattering reversal to Turkey’s hope of joining the European Union, a visionary proposal already endangered by the country’s broken relations with Cyprus and its refusal to acknowledge the genocide for what it was. Turkey being a poor country, with living standards at about a quarter of EU levels wants to be a member of the EU. This would benefit Turkey from the economic advantages that belonging to the trading bloc can bring. It would also receive central funding from the EU budget.

On 3 October 2005, membership negotiations were symbolically opened with Turkey. Nevertheless, obstacles remain on the road to Turkey’s accession. In particular, these are the issue of Turkey opening its ports and airports to vessels from Cyprus, freedom of expression, especially court cases against writers and journalists, as well as Kurdish minority rights.

Several European states such as Austria have made clear their unwillingness to allow a large and populous Muslim country into Europe. However, the issue of Cyprus continues to be a major obstacle to negotiations. European officials have commented on the slowdown in Turkish reforms which, combined with the Cyprus problem, has led the EU’s enlargement commissioner to warn of an impeding ‘train crash’ in negotiations with Turkey.