FORMER CULTURE MINISTER AND CURRENT PARLIAMENT MEMBER QUESTION TURKS TALENT TO PRODUCE WORTHY LITERATURE

Armenpress
Nov 01 2006

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 1, ARMENPRESS: A former Armenian culture minister
Hakob Movses questioned today the national identity of a Turkish
writer Orhan Pamuk who was awarded Nobel Literature Prize this year
saying the Turkish nation was incapable of producing a work of art
or literature of world significance and value.

"I am not a racist but I can say with certainty that this is simply
impossible,’ the former culture minister argued. "Man must have
genetics in order to have spirit and genius, genius that derives from
the Latin ‘genus," Movses who is the author of several collections
of poetry and prose claimed.

Movses claimed that many people in Germany where Pamuk’s books were
issued in millions of copies suspect him of being a pureblooded
Turk. "Nevertheless I am happy that a Turkish writer was awarded
this prize, because if ideas and culture enter a barbaric tribe it
means it has not yet lost all chances to become a civilized nation,"
he said. He also praised Pamuk for referring to the Armenian genocide.

Pamuk, whose novels include "Snow" and "My Name is Red," was charged
last year for telling a Swiss newspaper in February 2005 that Turkey
was unwilling to deal with two of the most painful episodes in recent
Turkish history: the massacre of Armenians during World War I, which
Turkey insists was not a planned genocide, and recent guerrilla
fighting in Turkey’s overwhelmingly Kurdish southeast.

"Thirty-thousand Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in
these lands, and nobody but me dares to talk about it," he told the
newspaper. A parliament member Alvard Petrosian from the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation (ARF) also welcomed the decision to award
the most prestigious prize to the Turkish writer, saying, however,
it was a political decision rather.

Ms. Petrosian, also author of several books of prose, echoed the
former culture minister questioning the ability of the Turkish nation
to produce a worthy literature.

"I have read only several poems of Turkish poets, but I cannot believe
that Turks can have good literature. Even if Pamuk is a pureblooded
Turk, which I strongly doubt, it is not enough to say that Turkish
literature is good. There may be a couple of good Turkish writers but
their literature is not good," she claimed, describing literature as
‘something like milk that feeds a nation, but Turkey definitely lacks
that sort of milk.