COURT OF APPEALS REVERSES LOCAL COURT RULING ON PAMUK CASE
Today’s Zaman
Jan 23 2008
Turkey
The Supreme Court of Appeals yesterday nullified a local court ruling
that dropped a civil suit against Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan
Pamuk for his controversial remarks about Armenian allegations of
genocide that were published in a Swiss magazine in 2005.
A civil suit had been filed by a group of five people, including
relatives of martyrs who claimed that Pamuk put the blame for
atrocities committed against Armenians during the collapse of the
Ottoman Empire on the entire Turkish nation with his remarks. During
an interview to Swiss Das magazine Pamuk had said: "We killed 30,000
Kurds and 1 million Armenians in these lands. Nobody but me dares to
say this in Turkey," in remarks that drew ire from the Turkish public
— particularly from nationalist circles.
Ýstanbul’s Þiþli Third Civil Court of First Instance dropped the case
in a 2006 ruling on the grounds that there had been no violation
of the individual rights of the plaintiffs in Pamuk’s remarks. The
plaintiffs appealed the court decision.
After reviewing the local court’s ruling, the Court of Appeals
nullified it on the grounds that there was no definition of individual
rights in the Turkish legal system and that the scope of individual
rights was not definite.
"It has been left to the judiciary to decide on what goes into the
definition of individual rights. Both in legal doctrine and judicial
rulings, it is acknowledged that individual rights include individuals’
physical, emotional and social values as well their profession, honor
and dignity, freedom, health, race, religion and bonds of citizenship,"
read the court ruling. The court noted that the plaintiffs had a
legal right to file a complaint over Pamuk’s remarks because they
were linked with citizenship bonds. The court asked for the review
of the case in consideration of the fact that the plaintiffs had a
legal right to file such a case.
The court ruling has opened the way for thousands of families of
martyrs to file cases against Pamuk. The lawyer of the plaintiffs,
Kemal Kerincsiz, who is a well-known ultranationalist, said earlier
that all the families of martyrs would file cases against Pamuk
and take away his Nobel Prize money if the Supreme Court of Appeals
nullified the local court ruling.
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