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Wall Street Journal
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
My Name Is Orhan
September 2, 2005
Supporters of Turkey’s efforts to get closer to Europe — count
us among them — cringed at the news that the country’s best-known
novelist faces prison time for speaking his mind.
By now, most Turks are familiar with Orhan Pamuk’s February interview
with the Swiss daily, Tages-Anzeiger. “Thirty thousand Kurds and
one million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me
dares to talk about it,” said the 53-year-old author of “My Name Is
Red,” which made his name abroad. He was referring to the two-decade
struggle against Kurdish separatism and, more controversially, the
1915 slaughter of Armenians at Ottoman hands.
Mr. Pamuk’s fiction touches on sensitive issues; his most recent novel,
“Snow,” explores the clash between radical Islam and secularism. But
his controversial foray into nonfiction suggests that the other
tension in Turkish life today is between conservative nationalism and
Western-style democratization. The massacre of Armenians is a major
flashpoint. That history isn’t openly discussed in Turkey which,
perhaps not coincidentally, maintains that genocide didn’t take place.
Turgay Evsen, a prosecutor, on Wednesday charged that the novelist
broke a law against “public denigrating of Turkish identity.” Mr.
Pamuk faces three years in prison, if convicted.
Privately, diplomats point out that the indictment was a politically
motivated attempt to hurt Turkey’s chances at the EU. While most
Turks back the reforms required by the EU, a powerful minority —
from within the traditionalist military to the extremist Islamists —
would love to torpedo their country’s progress toward the Western
world. The government was furious at the timing of the indictment,
which came a day before EU foreign ministers met to discuss whether
accession talks can begin, as planned, October 3.
It would be bitterly ironic if the Pamuk case turned the EU more off
Turkey. The author has repeatedly argued that continued European
engagement is the best guarantor of Turkish democracy. “Just the
belief of membership has changed many things,” Mr. Pamuk said in
July. Of course, his current predicament also serves to remind that
Turkey has a way to go, which is no surprise.
Turkish officials are on shaky ground in defending section 301/1 of
the penal code — adopted in June at EU urging — that ensnared Mr.
Pamuk. The European Commission yesterday expressed “serious concerns”
that the law doesn’t sufficiently protect freedom of expression.
Well, as long as zealous prosecutors can use the laws to infringe
basic freedoms, Turkey can’t really call itself a proper democracy.