There was a huge turnout in Istanbul on Tuesday for the funeral of the assassinated journalist Hrant Dink. Mourners held up placards saying, “We are all Armenians” and “We are all Hrant Dink.”

It was a heartening display of support for values that the slain editor of the bilingual paper Agos defended at the cost of his life: free speech, acknowledgment of the 1915 genocide of Armenians in Turkey, and reconciliation between Turks and the 60,000 Armenians who remain in Turkey. Encouraging as that affirmation of tolerance and pluralism may be, Dink’s murder illuminates a conflict that pervades the society in Turkey. Turkish nationalism has been nourished on myths that are rooted in the ideology of the founder of the post-Ottoman Turkish state, Kemal Ataturk. Turkey’s military and security services have interpreted Kemalism in a way that defines cultural and linguistic autonomy for Kurds and other minorities as a rebellious challenge to the ideal of Turkishness.

To gain entry to the EU, Turkey’s political leaders will have to conduct a broad educational campaign, uprooting myths about the mass murder of Armenians and the military’s dirty war against the Kurds.

Before Turks can take on a new European identity, they will have to redefine what it means to be Turkish.