Boston Globe, United States

A Turkish writer’s plea

October 19, 2008

POLITICAL scientists evaluate societies with quantitative
methods. Literary figures prefer a more telling, qualitative
criterion: freedom of expression. The 2006 Turkish Nobel laureate for
literature, Orhan Pamuk, delivered a devastating critique of the power
elite in his own country last week when he lamented the oppression of
Turkish writers in a speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Pamuk’s description of the situation of Turkish writers was
courageous, and not only because he gave it in the presence of
Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul. The novelist’s denunciation of
attempts to silence writers was striking because in 2005 he himself
had been charged, under the infamous Article 301 of the penal code,
with "public denigration of Turkish identity." His offense was to have
told a Swiss newspaper that "30,000 Kurds and a million Armenians were
killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it."

Article 301 has since been amended. But as Pamuk said in Frankfurt:
"The state’s habit of penalizing writers and their books is still very
much alive; Article 301 of the Turkish penal code continues to be used
to silence and suppress many other writers, in the same way it was
used against me." Pamuck said there are hundreds of writers and
journalists being prosecuted and found guilty under the code.

Pamuk was not only protesting the folly of repressing writers in the
name of protecting Turkish identity. He also made a plea for Turkey’s
writers to "value the richness of our cultural traditions and our own
uniqueness."

Turkish political elites should heed this plea. Turkey wants to be
both true to itself and truly European. That can happen only when it
allows writers to express themselves freely.