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When its
finest novelist attacked Turkey's bloody past, he
became a hero for Armenians and Turks alike, says
Nouritza Matossiann
There is a Turkish saying: 'A sword won't cut
without inspiration from the pen.'
Orhan Pamuk, wielder of Turkey's finest pen, has
spoken and cut a swath through his country's
conscience. His most recent novel Snow was set in
Kars and peppered with references to the Armenian
culture of that formerly Armenian city. Brilliant
novelist, translated in 20 languages, winner of
international prizes, he has become a hate figure.
His crime was one sentence in an interview with the
Swiss newspaper Tagesanzeiger this month. 'Thirty
thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed
in Turkey. Almost no one dares speak but me, and the
nationalists hate me for that.' All hell broke
loose. The press attacked him for dishonouring the
Turkish state and incitement to racial violence. He
has been called a liar, 'a miserable creature' and a
'black writer' in the daily Hurriyet. Professor
Hikmet Ozdemir, head of the Armenian studies
department at the Turkish Union of Historians,
rejected his statement as a 'great lie'.
A lone voice, Halil Berktay, professor at Sabanci
University, supported Pamuk: 'In 1915-16 about
800,000 or one million Armenians were killed for
sure.'
Mehmet Üçok, an attorney, filed charges at the
Kayseri public prosecutor's office. Another charge
was filed by Kayseri Bar Association attorney Orhan
Pekmezci: 'Pamuk has made groundless claims against
the Turkish identity, the Turkish military and
Turkey as a whole. He should be punished for
violating Articles 159 and 312 of the Turkish penal
code. He made a statement provoking the people to
hatred and animosity through the media, which is
defined as a crime in Article 312.'
I find this ironic. My mother's family was deported
from the historic Armenian city of Kayseri, leaving
their murdered menfolk behind.
I was recently in Istanbul lecturing on my biography
of Armenian-American artist Arshile Gorky, the basis
for the controversial genocide movie Ararat.
Official permission for my talk required me not to
utter the word 'genocide' to refer to the Ottoman
empire's systematic deportations, tortures and
killings of two million Armenians which Gorky
witnessed. I might refer to those 'incidents'. The
crime has never been acknowledged by successive
Turkish governments, Britain or the United States.
Recent discussions of Turkey's possible entry into
the EU were dominated by France and other countries
demanding that Turkey first admit the Armenian
genocide. What if Britain had a law forbidding
criticism of its history, identity, or the armed
forces? Turkey has far to go to reach the legal
standards of EU members, with their humane and
non-discriminatory laws aiming at standards of truth
and reason. So much hatred. So much anger. What does
Turkey have to hide?
'Pamuk has always defended freedom of speech and
thought, the rights of minorities,' writes Hrant
Dink, owner of the Armenian Turkish-language weekly
Agos . 'For 90 years we Armenians have been abused,
insulted and discriminated against. We cannot enter
certain professions, we Turkified our names. We have
learnt to survive and endure without protest. Maybe
it is time that the Turkish people also learnt
tolerance and endurance from us.'
In London, a thinly veiled propaganda exercise at
the Royal Academy trumpets Turkish empires, making
far-reaching claims about the origins of the 'Turkic
peoples'. Echoes of master-race ideology. Pamuk
himself writes in the Academy journal: 'Turks
gripped by romantic myths of nationalism are keen to
establish that we come from Mongolia or central
Asia... scholars have come no closer to offering
definitive or convincing evidence to link us with a
particular time and place.'
In the show the contributions of other nationals in
the Ottoman empire - Armenians, Greeks and Jews -
are not credited. Yet their handiwork is everywhere,
in architecture, pottery, carpets, manuscripts.
Britain colludes in this travesty for the sake of
oil interests in Azerbaijan, Turkey's closest ally.
Akin Birdal, vice-president of the International
Federation of Human Rights Leagues, emphasises: 'No
matter we have come to the 90th year of "incidents"
Orhan Pamuk talked about, these will of course be
discussed on domestic and international platforms.
The aggressions carried out against Pamuk are those
which have been carried out against thought. Pamuk
is not alone.' Pamuk has cut the Gordian knot. He
has become the hero of every right-thinking person
in Turkey and every Armenian worldwide.
·Nouritza Matossian is author of 'Black Angel, A
Life of Arshile Gorky' .
http://observer.guardian.co.uk
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