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Turkish Ferry Hijacker Held After Anti-Armenian Outburst


AP, Reuters
Police have detained an armed man who briefly held up a ferry and threatened to blow it in protest of pro-Armenian slogans chanted at a slain journalist's funeral, private NTV television reported Sunday.

The man, claiming to have plastic explosives on him, seized the ferry as it was on its way from Gelibolu to Lapseki late Saturday, Gov. Yusuf Ziya Ince told NTV. He gave himself up to police after 2 1/2 hours, Ince said. The man was armed but was not carrying any explosives, Ince said.

Television footage showed the man shouting: "I did it for the country," as he was being led away from the ferry to a police vehicle.

Ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who spoke out about the mass killings of Armenians in the early 20th century, was gunned down outside his newspaper a week ago. His funeral inspired a massive outpouring of support for reconciliation between Armenians and Turks.

Ince and ferry passengers said the man was angered by the pro-Armenia slogans chanted at the funeral,

In a separate incident, unidentified attackers threw stones at a church in the northern Turkish town of Samsun on Sunday in the latest attack on Christians in predominantly Muslim Turkey, Anatolian news agency said.

Windows were broken but Mehmet Orhan Picakcilar, a priest at the Agape Church, was quoted as saying there were no casualties. "This does damage to Turkey. This attack depicts Turkey in a bad way before international public opinion," Picakcilar said.

Growing nationalism among young people from Turkey's Black Sea towns has come under the spotlight since the teenager suspected of killing Dink and his alleged supporters were found to have come from the town of Trabzon.

(AP-Photolur photo: The hearse carrying the coffin of Hrant Dink is carried through the gathered crowds during his funeral ceremony on January 23 in Istanbul.)
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