NOBEL-WINNER PAMUK BACK IN COURT FOR CONTEMPT
by Furio Morroni
ANSAmed
12.WAM50268.html
May 15 2009
Italy
(ANSAmed) – ANKARA – The notorious article 301 of the Turkish Penal
Code regarding freedom of expression was amended a year ago, but it
doesn’t seem to have done much good. Nobel Prize-winning Turkish writer
Orhan Pamuk is back under the hammer for "contempt of the Turkish
national identity" over his statement about the massacres of Armenians
during the age of the Ottoman Empire. The news was reported today by
newspaper Hurriyet, which told of the sentence handed down yesterday
by Turkey’s Supreme Court which, for the second time in a year,
has thrown out the judgement of an Istanbul court which had rejected
the accusations levelled at Pamuk and closed the trial. According to
Supreme Court the charges brought against Pamuk for having offended
the Turkish nation were valid and the initial court made a mistake
in their initial dismissal of the suit, which they threw out because
the plaintiffs could not speak for the entire country. The initial
offence regards Pamuk telling a Swiss magazine that "we Turkish have
killed 30,000 Kurds and a million Armenians and nobody, apart from
me, dares to speak about it in Turkey". This statement, which Many
Turkish people claim is "Pamuk’s self-candidacy for the Nobel Prize
and the real reason why he won it", unleashed great controversy
in Turkey and offended the sensibilities of many. For example, the
relatives of the more than 30,000 killed by the Kurdistan Workers’
Party (PKK – considered a terrorist organisation by the USA and EU)
in the armed struggle against the Turkish State, who were not only
Kurdish, but soldiers and Turkish citizens. Six Turkish citizens,
relatives of soldiers killed by PKK rebels, have pressed charges
against Pamuk for moral damages, requesting compensation of around
30,000 dollars. However, in June 2006 a civil tribunal in Istanbul
judged that "the plaintiffs cannot be considered the representatives
of an entire nation" and as such |’cannot say that they are personally
offended" by the writer’s statements. The Supreme Court overturned this
sentence for the first time on January 22 2008, claiming that |’the
feeling of belonging to a nation is a right that must be protected
and a statement which harms the entire nation gives the individual
the right to launch legal action against this". Yesterday’s sentence
saw the Supreme Court re-state its position and send the trial back
to court which will have to look in detail at the issue. If found
guilty, Pamuk will have to pay damages to the plaintiffs, which have
gone up in the meantime and could in theory run to millions in that
the Supreme Court’s ruling gives each Turkish citizen the right to
sue for any defamatory remark about Turkey. (ANSAmed).