The Daily Telegraph, UK
Oct 13 2006
Nobel prize for Turkish author who divided nation over massacres
By Oliver Poole in Istanbul
(Filed: 13/10/2006)
Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish novelist prosecuted for "insulting
Turkishness" after commenting on the scale of the Armenian massacre,
was yesterday named winner of the Nobel Prize for literature.
Orhan Pamuk: Overjoyed
This could bring renewed claims that the prize is now politicised
after Harold Pinter, a critic of the Iraq war, won last year despite
his last acclaimed stage work having been written in 1978.
Yesterday’s announcement was particularly contentious as it came on
the day French MPs voted to make it a crime to deny that the Armenian
massacre occurred, a move that provoked fury in Turkey.
Pamuk, 54, is lauded for novels such as Snow and My Name is Red that
deal with Turkey’s coming to terms with its imperial past and its
position as a crossroads between East and West.
But last year he became better known as a symbol for free speech
campaigners after he was put on trial for rejecting the official line
on the Armenian massacre, which the Turkish government says was not
genocide. Pamuk told a Swiss newspaper that Turkey was unwilling to
face the reality that "30,000 Kurds and one million Armenians" had
been killed in the country’s recent history.
advertisementHe faced up to three years in prison, but the case was
dropped on a technicality in January.
However, Pamuk’s comments resulted in death threats and a provincial
governor calling for his books to be burnt. At one point he had to go
into hiding abroad.
Horace Engdahl, the head of the Nobel academy, stressed that Pamuk
had been chosen for his literary achievements. "It could lead to some
political turbulence but we are not interested in that," he said. "He
is controversial in his own country, but so are almost all our
prize-winners."
Pamuk was selected because he "enlarged the roots of the contemporary
novel" through his links to both Western and Eastern culture.
The citation for the award praised his latest work, Istanbul:
Memories of a City, as a "quest for the melancholic soul [in which
he] has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of
cultures".
The Turkish cultural ministry chose to dwell on Pamuk’s achievement
in becoming the first Turk to win the prize rather than the recent
court case, or his decision in 1998 to reject the accolade of State
Artist. "I am concerned only with Pamuk as a novelist," said Mustafa
Isen, the ministry’s under-secretary. "I congratulate him."
Pamuk was born into a wealthy, westernised family and turned to
writing after deciding he did not have the talent to become a
painter. He has published five novels and won the International IMPAC
award for My Name is Red.
Pamuk, who will receive a gold medal and a £750,000 cheque, described
his writing as a study of "international themes. . . seen through my
Turkish window".
It is a vantage point that has enabled him to examine East-West
issues and subsequent clashes between Islam and secularism, tradition
and modernity. In My Name is Red and Snow, he explores "the confusion
in-between" that occurs when the cultures attempt to exist together.
The study of Istanbul, written in a room overlooking the Bosphorus,
celebrates the "melancholy" atmosphere caused by the impact of
westernisation on a city filled with reminders of a glorious but
abandoned imperial past.
Embracing that emotion, he says, at least offers the citizens a
chance to escape from the far more painful belief of cultural
triumphalism.
Pamuk, at present a visiting professor at Columbia University, New
York, said that he was overjoyed by the award.
It was "an honour bestowed upon the Turkish literature and culture I
represent".
Kemal Kerincsiz, who leads a group of ultra-nationalist lawyers that
helped bring the charges against Pamuk, said he was ashamed by the
award.
"I don’t believe it was given for his books or literary identity. It
was given because he belittled our national values, for his
recognition of the genocide. As a Turkish citizen I am ashamed."