Biber Dolmasi (Stuffed Peppers)

For some of the city’s youth, the region’s culture of bravado and machismo
seems to make a breeding ground for anger.

“Black Sea people are dynamic, restless, energetic and have strong heroic feelings,” said Adem Solak, a prison therapist who works with the youth who killed Father Santaro. “Their environment, built on a single culture without interaction with diverse ethnicities, creates a greater potential for reaction to social
issues.”

Expressions of anger are easy to come by, as are defenses of Mr. Samast and the killing of Mr. Dink.

“I don’t think brother Ogun did wrong,” said Murat, 19, a university dropout who, like many interviewed, refused to give his last name, saying he feared police harassment. “We heard that the Armenian cursed our blood, which we cannot accept.” He and his friend Hasan, 18, chain-smoking at a cafe near the town center, said they had known Mr. Samast for years in Pelitli, the suburb where all three grew up. They praised nationalism with a religious undertone.

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A colleague, who gave his name as Hamdi and said he was 21, went on from there. “What would you expect in a town where there are no social activities for young people, no job opportunities, and everyone around you loves to cause trouble?” he said.

The problem with Mr. Samast was not his politics, they said, but his failure to leave it to the government to defend the nation.

The city was populated by Greeks, Armenians and Abkhazians when it was a trading center, but after Turkish independence in the 1920s, the Greeks left, and Trabzon became overwhelmingly Muslim and Turkish. Since then the people here have been seen as having strong nationalist and religious values. Use of weapons adds another dimension to the pride of individual bravery.

“We cannot do without weapons,” Asim Aykan, a member of Parliament from Trabzon, said on NTV.

“They are a special part of the culture of our society. We cannot express our joy without firing guns. That is the culture, which is beautiful but can also turn bad.”

On a cold and windy Sunday after Mr. Dink was killed, crowds attending a game at the soccer stadium here waved Turkish flags. One group opened a huge banner saying: “We’re from Trabzon. We’re Turks. We’re all Mustafa Kemals” — a reference to the founder of the modern Turkish state.

That was a rebuttal to the many thousands of Turks in Istanbul who attended Hrant Dink’s funeral carrying signs that read: “We’re all Hrant Dinks. We’re all Armenians.”

Nationalism of the former sort “embraces intolerance towards the other, superiority over minorities and not only fear but also hatred toward the foreigner,” said Professor Ali Carkoglu of Sabanci University in Istanbul.

The feeling is stirred up by global events like the war in Iraq, the Danish cartoons satirizing Muhammad and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Then there is Turkey’s ambition to join the European Union, which has brought many changes.

That long process has its ups and downs, said Melek Goregenli, a professor of political psychology at Ege University in Izmir. She said that it “helped bring unspoken thoughts to the fore, made them more visible, but at the same time made those who spoke out as targets for those who couldn’t tolerate free expression of thought and equal rights for everyone.”

But even in this city, there are people who try to revive the feeling of unity among ethnic groups that lived together for centuries. In a historic building once used as a prison, a local theater company performed an Armenian comedy classic the weekend after Mr. Dink was killed.

There had been several sold-out shows, and the seats were sold out for that performance too. But because of fears about security, the theater was empty,
Necati Zengin, the director of the play, said in a sad and frustrated tone.