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Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk may face
another court case
26.12.2005
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ANKARA (Reuters) - Best-selling Turkish writer
Orhan Pamuk may face another court case for
allegedly insulting the Turkish military in an
interview with a German newspaper, his publishers
said on Monday.
Pamuk is already on trial under Article 301 of the
revised penal code for telling a Swiss newspaper
that no one dared discuss the alleged massacre of a
million Armenians 90 years ago and the deaths of
30,000 Kurds in the past two decades.
The issue of freedom of speech has dogged every
stage of Turkey's efforts to join the European
Union. While the EU agreed to start entry talks with
Turkey in October, such court cases are likely to
hinder Ankara's progress towards full membership.
Nihat Tuna of publishers Iletisim Yayinlari said the
prosecutor of an Istanbul court which charged Pamuk
for denigrating Turkish identity had begun an
investigation under the same article.
"This is a preliminary investigation. It does not
mean that another case against Pamuk will be
launched," Tuna told Reuters. |
Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk
Photo: AFP |
Daily Vatan said the nationalist Lawyers Unity
Association called on prosecutors to charge Pamuk
under Article 301, which punishes insulting Turkish
identity, the army and parliament with up to three
years in jail, in an interview with the daily Die
Welt.
The 53-year-old author of best-sellers "My Name is
Red" and "Snow" is seen by many as a Nobel
Literature Prize contender. His novels deal with the
clash between past and present and the values of
East and West from the point of view of a bourgeois
intellectual.
The same court has opened a case against an
Armenian-Turkish journalist for his comments on a
previous six-month sentence it gave him for
denigrating Turkish identity.
The lawyers said on Sunday the same court had opened
a case over their demand against Hrant Dink,
editor-in-chief of the bilingual Turkish and
Armenian weekly Agos published in Istanbul, and
three other Agos journalists on grounds that they
allegedly "tried to influence the judiciary" through
editorials in the weekly.
If convicted, the four journalists face jail terms
of between nine months to 4-1/2 years if convicted.
The court fined a writer on Thursday on the grounds
of breaching Article 301 in a book on the evacuation
of Kurdish, Armenian and Syriac Christian villages
over the past 100 years and a publisher for an
article on Turkey's Iraq policy.
Reuters
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