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Turkish novelist faces jail for 'insulting national character'

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  • Turkish novelist faces jail for 'insulting national character'

    Turkish novelist faces jail for 'insulting national character'
    By Benjamin Harvey in Istanbul

    Published: 01 September 2005
    The Independent (UK)
    http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article309433.ece

    One of Turkey's best-known novelists has been charged with insulting
    the country's national character and could face a prison sentence.

    Orhan Pamuk is scheduled to go on trial on 16 December and could
    face up to three years in prison for comments on Turkey's killing of
    Armenians and Kurds, his publisher, Tugrul Pasaoglu, said yesterday.

    "Thirty thousand Kurds and one million Armenians were killed in these
    lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it," Pamuk said in an
    interview with a Swiss newspaper in February.

    The "one million" refers to Armenians killed by Ottoman Turks at about
    the time of the First World War, which Armenians and several nations
    recognise as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey vehemently
    denies that genocide took place, saying the death toll is inflated and
    Armenians were killed in a civil war as the Ottoman Empire collapsed,
    eventually giving way to the Turkish Republic in 1923.

    The "thirty thousand Kurds" mentioned by Pamuk refers to those
    killed since 1984 as Turkey fought a vicious war against armed
    Kurdish separatists.

    Turkey, which has been trying to improve its human rights record as
    it vies for membership of the EU, is extremely sensitive about both
    the Armenian and Kurdish issues, and its new penal code makes it a
    crime to denigrate Turkey's national identity.

    Pamuk's books, which include the internationally acclaimed Snow and
    My Name is Red, have been translated into more than 20 languages. His
    publisher said yesterday:"We have to wait for the court. Then he
    [Pamuk] will make his speech in the court."
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