!áH€ ="justify">When it comes to interacting with people, my personal experience has already taught me, the most important trait I need to take into account is sincerity.

Ô's significance, on the other hand, is simply its level of consistency. Any interaction, either on an intellectual or a daily basis, with people who have failed to absorb these two crucial traits, is, in my humble opinion, nothing more than a mere waste of time.

In the atmosphere of intellectual terror revolving around the Armenian "genocide" (as well as Turkey's democratization), both in and outside the country, I've seen notorious and illustrious self-proclaimed experts who were neither sincere nor consistent. While some of them were merely prejudiced and obsessed, others were either politically motivated or ignorant.

There are three names that are exceptions, none of which I happen to know personally. They have proven themselves sincere and consistent. I've heartfeltly envied the attitude of these three men, although on certain issues I categorically disagree with them.

The first one is Professor Baskın Oran. In response to the infamous Armenian conference held at Bilgi University in September 2005 and attended by experts either opposing or challenging the "official ideology," an alternative gathering was organized in Ankara. The participants were overwhelmingly those scholars supporting the "Turkish thesis," but the attendees of the first were reported to have been invited as well. I later found out that except for Professor Oran, none of them deigned to accept this invitation. His noble decision to attend confirmed, at least in my eyes, Professor Oran's sincere respect for freedom of speech or thought as well as the need for healthy dialogue with the "other," the doors of which, under the present circumstances, are increasingly closed not only among but also within the communities themselves.

The second figure is Turkish Armenian Patriarch Mesrob Mutafyan II. I humbly believe that the speech he made at the symposium held in Kayseri last spring is of grave importance for the future of Turkish-Armenian relations. Readers may well remember that I quoted a couple of his remarks in my previous analyses. Be sure it was not because I naively believed that praise motivated by narrow opportunism would help strengthen the Turkish standpoint. In my understanding, his noble stance, purified from potentially combustible human instincts such as revenge, indeed serves as a valuable roadmap for healthy dialogue. Unless the Turks and Armenians, without any cunning or sly motives, agree, as Patriarch Mutafyan warned in the said speech, to give up abandoning their responsibility or completely putting it on the other side, there won't be any peace between these two emotional peoples, who strongly resemble each other.

The third one is, or sadly was, journalist Hrant Dink. He obviously was a man of emotions. I could understand his level of sincerity even by the way he excitingly spoke on TV. In the current messianic atmosphere, everybody, whether a Turk or an Armenian, is trying to exploit what is happening in the respective countries to support their personal views vis-a-vis the "other." Everybody, both in Armenia and Turkey, is trying to play to the gallery, despite the social and psychological divisions caused at the end of the day between ordinary peoples. Dink, in turn, said what he sincerely believed, without expecting to be proven right. He chose to do what was not only difficult but also risky to do.

In his last article, he wrote that he felt like a frightened dove.

And now, the dove has murdered.

I expect the government to quickly as possible find the real, if any, perpetrators of Dink's murder, since I don't want to live in the moral grave that these dark figures have successfully cast the Turkish people into.

But the dove is dead …

I see vultures gathering in the sky.

I remember Dink zealously and self-sacrificingly fighting against these vultures, not only among the stubborn, blind Turks and Armenians but also among irrelevant third parties who, due to Turks' as well as Armenians' own mistakes, have come to bear responsibility as well. I hope what Dink during his life failed to do will be realized through his untimely loss.

But I am not hopeful.

I see increasing numbers of vultures on the horizon approaching.

And when there are vultures in the sky, the doves of peace won't be able to fly.