Turkish Author’s Trial Suspended

The internationally publicized trial of this nation’s best-known novelist, Orhan Pamuk, on charges of insulting Turkey was suspended Friday at a tense hearing.

Many European Union observers who came to support Pamuk said they had expected the presiding judge to dismiss the case and end the damage it had caused to Turkey’s efforts to join the alliance.

Judge Metin Aydin agreed instead to the prosecution’s request that the trial be suspended until the Justice Ministry delivered an opinion on the case, which had been mired in legal ambiguities. The confusion stems in part from the fact that Pamuk made his controversial statement about Turkish repression of Armenians and Kurds before a new penal code was introduced in June.

The next hearing was set for Feb. 7.

British lawmaker Dennis McShane, who attended the trial as an observer, noted: “The accusation of insulting the state is something you associate with dictatorial regimes, not with a modern European state.”