PanARMENIAN.Net

Pamuk to receive honorary doctorate from Berlin’s Free University
09.03.2007 12:45 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Turkish Nobel literature laureate Orhan Pamuk’s
German publisher said on Thursday he would visit Germany in May for a
reading tour which was planned for February but reportedly cancelled
for security reasons. "We are delighted that Orhan Pamuk is prepared
so soon already to carry out the visit cancelled on short notice in
February," Carl Hanser Publishing said. German newspapers had said the
writer called off the trip because he feared for his life after the
murder in January of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in
Istanbul, but Pamuk did not confirm the reports. Dink is believed to
have been killed by ultra-nationalists in revenge for remarks he made
about the massacre of Armenians under the Ottoman empire, reports the
AFP.

Pamuk, the author of "Snow" and other novels mulling Turkey’s clash
between Muslim and Western culture, has angered Turkish authorities
with similar remarks. He was prosecuted for telling a Swiss magazine
that 30,000 Kurds and a million Armenians had been killed during World
War I under the Ottoman Turks, but the case was dropped on a
technicality. Pamuk’s tour of Germany will begin in Hamburg on May 2
and will also take in Berlin, Cologne, Munich and Stuttgart. He will
receive an honorary doctorate from Berlin’s Free University on May 4.