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Former Culture Minister and Current Parliament Member Question Turks

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  • Former Culture Minister and Current Parliament Member Question Turks

    FORMER CULTURE MINISTER AND CURRENT PARLIAMENT MEMBER QUESTION TURKS TALENT TO PRODUCE WORTHY LITERATURE

    Armenpress
    Nov 01 2006

    YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 1, ARMENPRESS: A former Armenian culture minister
    Hakob Movses questioned today the national identity of a Turkish
    writer Orhan Pamuk who was awarded Nobel Literature Prize this year
    saying the Turkish nation was incapable of producing a work of art
    or literature of world significance and value.

    "I am not a racist but I can say with certainty that this is simply
    impossible,' the former culture minister argued. "Man must have
    genetics in order to have spirit and genius, genius that derives from
    the Latin 'genus," Movses who is the author of several collections
    of poetry and prose claimed.

    Movses claimed that many people in Germany where Pamuk's books were
    issued in millions of copies suspect him of being a pureblooded
    Turk. "Nevertheless I am happy that a Turkish writer was awarded
    this prize, because if ideas and culture enter a barbaric tribe it
    means it has not yet lost all chances to become a civilized nation,"
    he said. He also praised Pamuk for referring to the Armenian genocide.

    Pamuk, whose novels include "Snow" and "My Name is Red," was charged
    last year for telling a Swiss newspaper in February 2005 that Turkey
    was unwilling to deal with two of the most painful episodes in recent
    Turkish history: the massacre of Armenians during World War I, which
    Turkey insists was not a planned genocide, and recent guerrilla
    fighting in Turkey's overwhelmingly Kurdish southeast.

    "Thirty-thousand Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in
    these lands, and nobody but me dares to talk about it," he told the
    newspaper. A parliament member Alvard Petrosian from the Armenian
    Revolutionary Federation (ARF) also welcomed the decision to award
    the most prestigious prize to the Turkish writer, saying, however,
    it was a political decision rather.

    Ms. Petrosian, also author of several books of prose, echoed the
    former culture minister questioning the ability of the Turkish nation
    to produce a worthy literature.

    "I have read only several poems of Turkish poets, but I cannot believe
    that Turks can have good literature. Even if Pamuk is a pureblooded
    Turk, which I strongly doubt, it is not enough to say that Turkish
    literature is good. There may be a couple of good Turkish writers but
    their literature is not good," she claimed, describing literature as
    'something like milk that feeds a nation, but Turkey definitely lacks
    that sort of milk.
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