Mr. Pamuk is accused of a committing a crime by mentioning, in an interview with a Swiss newspaper, that "a million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds" were killed in Turkey after World War I. The Armenian massacres are a widely documented fact. But it is an officially taboo subject in Turkey; and the government, nationalist political groups and press immediately joined in attacking Mr. Pamuk....
So what explains this latest Turkish assault on free speech? It won't do to blame religious extremists. Most of Mr. Pamuk's detractors belong to the political right wing, which in Turkey means that they are determined secularists. The prosecutor who instigated the legal proceedings belongs to a longstanding secular Turkish state that has cracked down on Muslim women wearing headscarves more harshly than has France.
December 16, 2005
The trial of Orhan Pamuk.
Pankaj Mishra writes:
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1 comment:
Isn't it interesting that so many of our "allies" like Turkey, France and Japan to name a few, actually reinvent their history to make themselves look better. It's only in the U.S. that we spin the truth to make our country look worse.
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