A large crowd in Istanbul on January 19 marked the 10th anniversary of the murder of Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian journalist who had long pushed for reconciliation between the country's Turkish and Armenian communities.

Hundreds of people gathered near the office of Dink's bilingual newspaper, Agos, to lay flowers near a plaque on the sidewalk at the site of his murder.

A large portrait of Dink also was placed on the building with an inscription saying, "We Miss You, Brother" along with a banner saying "No Hrant, No Justice."

The 52-year-old Dink, a leading member of Turkey's Armenian community, was gunned down in broad daylight by a Turkish ultranationalist on January 19, 2007.

Seventeen-year-old Ogun Samast confessed to the murder and was sentenced to almost 23 years in jail in 2011.

A Turkish nationalist, Yasin Hayal, was found guilty of ordering the murder and sentenced in 2012 to life in prison.

But the murder grew into a wider scandal after it emerged that the security forces knew of a plot to kill Dink but failed to act.

Armenians accuse Ottoman forces during World War I of carrying out genocide against their forebears that left an estimated 1.5 million people dead.

Turkey has vehemently resisted terming the mass killings as genocide.

Based on reporting by Cumhuriyet and Hurriyet