Orhan Pamuk convicted of insulting Turkishness
Turkish Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk has been convicted of "insulting Turkishness" and ordered to pay nearly $4,000 in compensation.
Turkish news media reported Sunday that a small claims court in the Sisli district of Istanbul ordered Pamuk to pay compensation to several plaintiffs over a remark he made in 2005 that was published in a Swiss newspaper. He said that 30,000 Turks and one million Armenians were killed in Turkey "and nobody but me dares to talk about it."
Pamuk is Turkey's most prominent writer. He received a Nobel Prize for literature in 2006.
Panorama.am recalls that Turkey has traditionally rejected the mass killings of 1,5 million Armenians carried out early in the 20th century and took the criticism of the West painfully. The Armenian Genocide has been recognized by lots of states. It was first recognized by Uruguay in 1965. Later Russia, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Greece, Cyprus, Lebanon, Canada, Venezuela, Argentina and the US 42 states did the same. The Armenian Genocide has been recognized also by Vatican, the Council of Europe, the World Council of Churches.