TURKISH ARMENIAN WOMAN SPEAKING AGAINST ORHAN PAMUK LIKELY TO BE
NOMINATED AS MP CANDIDATE

ANKARA, MAY 19, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. 61-year-old Turkish
Armenian citizen Verkin Arhoba applied to the "Justice and Democracy"
ruling party with the request to be nominated by this party as MP
candidate.

Verkin Arhoba is a member of the governing body of the Preservation of
Historical Heritage organization. She was born in 1946, received
education in the US and Switzerland, married to a Turk.

The Turkish press underlines the fact that Verkin Arhoba is noted for
her criticism of the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk. As is well known, the
2006 Literature Nobel prize winner Orhan Pamuk said in an interview to
a Swiss newspaper that "30 thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were
killed in these lands (NT: Turkey). No one, except me, has had the
courage to speak about it." Criticizing these words of Pamuk, Arhoba
noted: "My family has lived in these lands for a thousand years and
did not go away. I raise my word of protest against the fact that he
made a show of this event in order to sell his book."

To recap, during a recent interview to "Zaman" newspaper, the Armenian
Patriarch of Constantinople Mesrop Mutafian attached importance to
representation of Armenians at the Mejlis.