The Telegraph (UK)

Trial of novelist ‘shows Turkey not ready for EU’

By Amberin Zaman in Ankara and Tony Paterson in Berlin

(Filed: 11/09/2005)

An internationally acclaimed Turkish novelist who faces prosecution for
speaking out about the mass slaughter of Armenians last century has said
the case against him shows his country may not be ready to join the
European Union.

Orhan Pamuk, who faces up to three years in jail if convicted at his
trial in December of “denigrating Turkey”, said that reforms promised by
the Turkish government in return for a guarantee of talks on EU
membership had not materialised.

Prosecutors provoked a furore across Europe last month by announcing the
action against him under the country’s recently adopted penal code,
which is supposed to bring Turkish criminal law more closely into line
with that of EU countries.

In his first interview since the prosecution was announced, Pamuk
declared: “Unfortunately I do not believe that Turkey has come very far
in this respect. Nothing has happened over the past year. Turkey has sat
on the promises that Europe has given and taken it easy.”

Although forbidden to comment directly on his own case, the best-selling
author added: “Turkey has not changed so much. Laws have been changed,
but the thought processes, our culture and our way of seeing things…
that has not changed much.

“There have been legal and political changes in the hope of EU
membership. But the trial opened against me shows… that the state
prosecutors have not changed very much. It shows that there is not much
tolerance in society.”

Pamuk’s comments, in an interview with a German newspaper, come as
several countries, including France, have stepped up their effort to
block Turkey’s entry to the EU after public opposition to the inclusion
of such a large, predominantly Muslim, country.

The EU has long cited Turkey’s chequered record on human rights as an
obstacle to membership, and its government – led by Recep Erdogan,
Turkey’s mildly Islamist prime minister – has enacted a series of new
laws in an attempt to overcome the objection. Talks on membership are
due to start next month.

Critics maintain that Turkey’s new penal code falls short of EU
standards by proscribing free debate of the Armenian tragedy and
criticism of Turkey’s 1974 invasion of Cyprus.

Last week Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, singled out the Pamuk
prosecution for criticism in a speech in which he nonetheless argued for
Turkish membership of the EU. “There is still some way to go with
implementation, as the recent charges against the distinguished Turkish
novelist Orhan Pamuk show, in the context of freedom of speech,” he said.

Pamuk drew nationalist ire in Turkey and received anonymous death
threats after telling a Swiss newspaper in February that “30,000 Kurds
and 1 million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me
dares to talk about it”. One Turkish official in the western town of
Sutluce ordered citizens to destroy all of his books.

Several of Pamuk’s novels, including the acclaimed My Name is Red, have
been translated into English. His most recent bestseller, Snow, explores
tensions between Turkey’s secular elite and religious conservatives.

Turkey has long denied that more than one 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 – a description of the events which is proscribed in Turkish law.

The Turkish government insists that a smaller number of Armenians –
several hundred thousand – died unintentionally of exposure, famine and
disease as they journeyed to Syria, after being deported for
collaborating with invading Russian forces.

Prosecutors are still deciding whether to bring further charges against
Pamuk for referring to the more recent killing of Kurds – whose
sometimes violent separatist movements in the east of the country have
been brutally suppressed by successive Turkish governments.

Mr Erdogan won strong praise from EU governments in April when he called
for a joint commission of Turkish and Armenian scholars to research the
events of 1915. It was the first time Turkish leaders had invited
international scrutiny of the deaths. This month a group of Turkish
academics who challenge the official line, saying that there was a
conspiracy to kill, will be allowed to gather in Istanbul to air their
views for the first time.