Prominent Turkish Novelist Charged Over Comments

01/09/2005

Prominent Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk could face a prison sentence of up to three years if convicted on charges of "public denigration of Turkish identity" brought against him Wednesday.

(The Washington Post, Independent, RIA Novosti - 01/09/05; AP, Reuters - 31/08/05; RFE/RL -- 14/04/05 - 26/04/05; The New Yorker - 30/08/04)

Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk will be tried in December for controversial remarks about the massacres of Armenians and Kurds. [AFP]

A prominent Turkish novelist, who nine years ago described prisons in his country as "hell", now faces the prospect of jail time for speaking his mind. On Wednesday (31 August), an Istanbul prosecutor charged Orhan Pamuk with insulting his country's national character over comments he made about the mass killings of Armenians and Kurds.

"Thirty thousand Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it," Pamuk was said in an interview published by the Swiss newspaper Tages Anzeiger on 6 February.

Turkey denies allegations that genocide was conducted against Armenians in 1915. It insists that the estimates of the dead have been exaggerated, arguing also that people from all ethnic communities died in the turmoil of civil war as the Ottoman Empire collapsed, eventually giving way to the Turkish Republic in 1923.

Pamuk's comments concerning Kurds, meanwhile, refer to a decades-long conflict between separatist rebels and government forces, beginning in 1984.

Although the writer did not refer to the killings as "genocide," his remarks angered nationalists and politicians, prompting death threats as well as accusations of treason published in some Turkish newspapers. In March, a senior official in Turkey's Isparta Province ordered the seizure and destruction of copies of his books.

Nearly seven months after Pamuk's interview with the Swiss paper, the public prosecutor in Istanbul's Sisli district decided that his remarks violated the country's penal code and indicted him on charges of "public denigration of Turkish identity". The writer, whose trial is due to begin 16 December, could face a prison sentence of between six months and three years.

Turkey revised its penal code this year in a bid to bring it in line with international standards and to meet the EU requirements for membership. But writers' and journalists' organisations view the changes as insufficient.

According to the Washington Post, Turkish law allows authorities to imprison people for differing with the government's line on issues of "fundamental national interest", including the 1915 killings.

Pamuk was "just trying to point out that first you have to face it -- a tragedy or a dispute or a problem, at least," Tugrul Pasaoglu, the writer's publisher and an editor at Iletisim publishing house in Istanbul, said Wednesday. "If you don't talk about it, then you can't find a solution."

Pamuk, 53, is one of Turkey's most famous novelists in at least a generation. His literary career began with the publishing of "Cevdet Bey and His Sons" in 1982. Since then he has written "The White Castle," "The Black Book" and "My Name Is Red". In May, he was shortlisted for the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction for "Istanbul," his personal memoir of growing up in Turkey's biggest and busiest city.

In an article published by The New Yorker in August last year, John Updike said Pamuk qualifies as Turkey's "most likely candidate for the Nobel Prize".

The long list of prizes Pamuk has won for his novels include the 2003 Impac Dublin Literary Award for ''My Name Is Red'' and the prestigious peace prize of the Association of German Publishers and Booksellers, which he received earlier this year.