Nobel winner denounces French genocide bill

1:30 PM October 13, 2006

ANKARA (AFP) – Dissident Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, winner of the 2006
Nobel Literature Prize, denounced a French bill that would make it a crime
to deny Turks commited genocide against Armenians, saying it flouted
France’s "tradition of liberal and critical thinking."

"What the French did is wrong," Pamuk, better known for criticizing his own
government, told the NTV television from New York, a day after the bill was
voted in the lower house of the French parliament, infuriating Ankara.

"France has a very old tradition of liberal and critical thinking and I
myself was influenced by it and learned much from it.

"But the decision they made constitutes a prohibition. It does not suit the
French tradition of liberalism," he said.

The bill, which still needs the approval of the Senate and the president to
take effect, foresees up to one year in jail and a heavy fine for anyone who
denies that the World War I massacres of Armenians under Ottoman rule were
genocide, a label Ankara fiercely rejects.

The 54-year-old Pamuk himself stood trial in Turkey this year for contesting
the official line on the massacres under an infamous provision for
"insulting Turkishness," which Ankara is under European Union
pressure to amend.

The trial was dropped on a technicality in January, but won Pamuk the
reputation of a "traitor" among Turkish nationalists.

His Nobel award, announced shortly after the French vote on Thursday, was
greeted with mixed reactions at home.

The government was among the many who hailed the first Turk to win a Nobel
prize, but skeptics questioned whether Pamuk was rewarded for his writing or
the political dissidence that has often embarrassed his country in the West.

Parliament Speaker Bulent Arinc and several newspaper columnists had called
on the writer to speak out against the French bill if he was an earnest
campaigner for free speech.

Pamuk, a staunch advocate of Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, urged
his compatriots not to "blow the issue out of proportion" in their reactions
to France.

"Don’t burn the duvet for a flea," he said, using a Turkish proverb.

Commenting on the mixed reaction to his award, Pamuk said: "There was never
a Nobel literature prize that was not met with any (negative) reactions…
I’m not angry with anyone. People are free to think what they like."

"These debates will one day end but the fact will remain that Turkey has won
a Nobel prize," he said. "I’m very honored and proud to have brought this
award to my country."

Pamuk first drew the ire of the state in the mid-1990s when he denounced the
treatment of the Kurdish minority as the army waged a heavy-handed campaign
to suppress a bloody separatist insurgency in the southeast.

The state extended an olive branch in 1998, offering him the accolade of
"State Artist," but Pamuk declined.