A Turkish writer’s brave plea
IHT
The Boston Globe
Published: 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 Turkish 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."
The article 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." He 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.