WRITER PAMUK CALLS FOR FREE SPEECH IN TURKEY

Agence France Presse — English
June 1, 2006 Thursday 5:07 PM GMT

Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk made a plea Thursday for freedom of
expression in Turkey on the mass killings of Armenians carried out
under the Ottoman Empire, calling on his country to become “free and
more open.”

“Whatever happened to Ottoman Armenians, we in Turkey should be able
to talk about. It is first a Turkish issue, an issue of freedom of
speech, democracy and liberal society rather than an an international
political issue,” Pamuk said at a press conference in Moscow.

The Turkish writer — a winner of numerous international awards for
his writings — was in Moscow to promote the Russian translation of
his book “Istanbul: Memories and the City”.

“I hope my country be free and more open, that we can talk about this
issue without having any anxiety. But I don’t know when,” he said.

“There should be no limits to freedom of speech” for writers, Pamuk
continued.

Last year, prosecutors charged Pamuk with “public denigration of the
Turkish identity” for remarks on the massacres of Armenians made in
an interview with a Swiss newspaper.

“One million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me
dares to talk about it,” Pamuk was quoted as saying in the interview.

The charges, which could have jailed Pamuk for up to three years,
were later dropped.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kinsmen died in orchestrated
killings nine decades ago during the last years of the Ottoman Empire,
the precursor of modern Turkey.

Turkey argues that 300,000 Armenians and thousands of Turks were killed
in what was civil strife during World War I when the Armenians rose
up against their Ottoman rulers.

Born in 1952 in Istanbul, Pamuk became famous for works such as “The
White Castle,” “My Name is Red,” and “Snow.” His works have been
translated into 40 languages.