NOBEL PRIZE AUTHOR: IRAQ WAR ‘MAJOR DISASTER’ FOR WEST

Middle East Online, UK
2007-09-10 15:26:24

Pamuk: ‘one of the major disasters in the last three or four decades’

Turkish author Orhan Pamuk says prestige of Western civilisation
ruined by ‘horrors and injustice’ of war.

TURIN, Italy – The Iraqi war was a disaster for the US and its allies
and had undermined support for democracy and secularism in the Islamic
world, Nobel Prize-winning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk told Adnkronos
International (AKI).

On a visit to Italy, Pamuk said the prestige of Western civilisation
had been ruined by the ‘horrors and injustice’ of the war and it
had poisoned relations between the Arab world and the US and its
European allies.

"I think it is one of the major disasters in the last three or four
decades, this war in Iraq. It’s destroyed a peaceful approach in the
Middle East towards democracy, towards human rights, western values
and women’s liberation," Pamuk told AKI.

He was visiting the northern city of Turin for a lecture organised
by the Premio Grinzane Cavour, a prestigious Italian literary prize
that he won in 2002.

Pamuk said Muslim countries were also suffering from simplistic
perceptions in the West that associated Islam with terrorism, suicide
killings and bombings.

"The common cliche is that Islam is a terrorist religon," he
said. "It is upsetting for civilisation and serves only American
military interests."

Addressing several hundred book lovers at the Palazzo Chiablese,
he spoke about the historic role of the West in defining Turkey’s
identity – often to the country’s shame.

Asked about the recent election of Turkey’s Islamist-rooted president
Abdullah Gul, he was cautiously optimistic.

"I don’t know how Gul will behave when he is in power," Pamuk told
Adnkronos. "I hope, as he said, that he defends freedom of speech,
freedom, that is good. But I also expect him to defend secularism
and we hope to see that."

Politics is dangerous territory for the 55-year-old author. In 2005
he faced criminal charges in Turkey for comments he made in a Swiss
publication about the mass killings of Armenians and Kurds in 1915. The
charges were later dropped.

"Politics happens to me, sometimes I get angry and tell the truth,"
Pamuk said, without referring to the incident. "Sometimes I am
nervous about injustice, but essentially, spiritually, I am not a
political man.

Most of the time I am a man who falls into political situations."

Pamuk is one of Turkey’s best selling authors and his books have been
translated into more than 40 languages.

He has won many national and international literary awards including
America’s Pulitzer Prize. Last year he became the first Turkish writer
to win the Nobel Prize – his crowning achievement – but one, he says,
without any political obligations.

"It is the greatest distinction an author can achieve in his literary
career -but it’s that," he said. "I don’t see any social connotation –
I’m happy just like a child is happy with his ice cream. I am happy
with my prize."