Charges dropped against Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk
by Alex on January 24, 2006
The charges against Orhan Pamuk for insulting Turkey have been dropped. But it hardly represents an official Turkish change of heart on the subject of free speech. Far from it. It is partly to appease the EU, which Turkey hopes to join, but it could also be an underhanded way of diverting press from the imminent trials against 8 other, lesser-known authors—who could be convicted and sent to jail for lack of the high international profile that protects Pamuk. This was Maureen Freely, his translator’s, fear, and it sounds reasonable to me. Hopefully the Turkish government won’t pull it off.
In a Slate article on the subject, Hugh Eakin makes a fascinating point:
There is surely some irony in that fact that you can now be prosecuted in Europe for denying a genocide and prosecuted in Turkey for asserting that a genocide took place.
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Thanks for posting this. I just finished reading the interview with Pamuk in The Paris Review and wondered what happened with that case. Best wishes to the other authors.
– The Angler (01/25 at 25-Jan 12:14 -05:00)