Orhan Pamuk Faces Prosecution
RFE/RL carries a report from AFP saying that prominent Turkish author Orhan Pamuk faces prosecution in Turkey after making “controversial remarks” about the Armenian Genocide. Pamuk faces three years imprisonment if convicted.
Pamuk, the widely translated author of such internationally renowned works as “The White Castle”, and “Snow”, triggered a public outcry when he said in an interview with a Swiss newspaper in February that “one million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it.”
Interestingly, the award winning author was one of 257 academics and writers that signed a letter in support of Yektan Turkyilmaz, another Turkish scholar who this time faced between four to eight years in prison in Armenia apparently for attempting to “smuggle” books over fifty years old out of the country.
Hopefully the precedent of the international academic community rallying to the support of Turkyilmaz who many believe was arrested by the former KGB in Armenia because of his work on the Genocide can now be expanded to included Pamuk.
I hope that the people that originally had supported Yektan, will do the same and even more to come to the help of Pamuk and make even bigger deal and issue, not to besmirch Turkey per se, but to show the real intolerance.
Comment by arty — August 31, 2005 @ 11:35 pm
It’s good to see this case getting attention again, as it has been quiet for a while. I hope that there will be a similar wave of support by Turkish people, Armenians and others as happened a few weeks ago with Yektan Turkyilmaz . It would be good if that was not a one-time-thing.
Comment by Myrthe — September 1, 2005 @ 11:22 am