Hrant Dink, the Turkish-Armenian editor of Agos who was convicted in 2005 of insulting Turkish identity, was shot dead outside his newspaper’s office in Istanbul on Friday.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the attack on Dink an attack on Turkey and on Turkish unity and stability, adding that the “dark hands” behind the killing would be brought to justice. “A bullet has been fired at democracy and freedom of expression,” he told a news conference.

The murder has provoked widespread shock in Turkey and thousands of people rallied in Istanbul to protest at the murder.

“We are all Armenians, we are all Hrant Dink,” the crowd chanted.

Dink often wrote about the mass killing of Armenians during the final days of the Ottoman empire which has led to his being prosecuted under Article 301 of the Turkish penal code and has attracted the ire of Turkish nationalists.

Journalists and politicians in Turkey expressed outrage at the killing, which many described as a political assassination, while the US, EU, Armenia, and several human rights groups also voiced shock and condemnation.

A crowd of several thousand people marched towards the office of Agos, the bilingual Turkish and Armenian weekly newspaper Dink edited, on Friday night.

Many carried red carnations and photographs of Dink with the inscription “My dear brother” in Turkish, Armenian and English.

The mood was not sombre but angry, the BBC’s Sarah Rainsford reports from Istanbul, with many demanding justice. There was also a protest by several hundred people in Ankara.

Dink was one of Turkey’s most prominent Armenian voices and despite threats on his life, he refused to stay silent.

“I will not leave this country. If I go I would feel I was leaving alone the people struggling for democracy…It would be a betrayal of them,” he told Reuters news agency last July.

The Turkish authorities identified the chief suspect on Saturday as Ogun Samast. And on Sunday, they arrested him on a bus in the Black Sea city of Samsun.

Samast’s image was captured on security cameras close to where Dink was killed. He was running from the scene, tucking what officials say is a gun into his belt.

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