Turkey Charges Novelist Over Remarks About Mass Deaths

Orhan Pamuk, one of Turkey’s best-known novelists, has been charged with insulting the nation and its people for speaking out against the mass deaths of Armenians during and after World War I and the more recent killings of Kurds, his publisher said Wednesday.

Pamuk will go on trial in December and could face three years in prison under the country’s revised penal code, which deems denigrating Turks and Turkey a punishable offense, Iletisim Publishing said in a written statement.

Officials declined to comment on the charges. Turkish law prohibits Pamuk from commenting on his case while it is pending.

Pamuk drew nationalist ire here and even received anonymous death threats after he told the Swiss daily newspaper Tagesanzeiger in an interview published Feb. 6 that “30,000 Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it.”

Turkey has long denied that more than 1 million members of its once thriving Armenian community were the victims of systematic annihilation between 1915 and 1923. Armenians and many others label the campaign genocide.

The Turkish government position is that several hundred thousand Armenians died as a result of exposure, famine and disease as they journeyed to Syria after being deported for collaborating with invading Russian forces.

Pamuk’s most recent bestselling novel, “Snow,” explores tensions between Turkey’s secular elite and religious conservatives.

News of Pamuk’s case came a day before European Union foreign ministers were scheduled to meet in Wales, mainly to discuss Turkey’s bid to join the 25-member bloc. The EU has long cited Turkey’s checkered record on human rights as the chief obstacle to membership.

Turkey won a date to open membership talks after its parliament passed numerous reforms that, among other steps, eased restrictions on the language spoken by the country’s large Kurdish minority. The talks are scheduled to begin Oct. 3. Several countries, including France, are seeking to block Turkey’s entry amid mounting public opposition to the inclusion of a large, poor and predominantly Muslim country.

Other critics charge that Turkey’s new penal code, which came into force in June, still falls short of EU standards by proscribing free debate of the Armenian tragedy and criticism of Turkey’s 1974 invasion of the Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus.

“How can Turkey possibly claim to be a European country if it has such laws on the books and prosecutors can bring such cases?” British novelist Maureen Freely, who translated “Snow” to English, said in an editorial published Wednesday in the Independent, a London newspaper.

Some EU diplomats speculated that the case against Pamuk was timed by elements within the Turkish government seeking to derail the country’s membership in the alliance.

“This can only be the work of those within the Turkish state who stand to lose influence under the [EU-oriented] reform process,” said a Western diplomat who asked not to be identified, reflecting a common practice among envoys. “How else can one explain the case being launched so long after Pamuk’s statement?”