Pride and Shame

How can a country that victimises its greatest living writer also join the EU?

TIMES ONLINE (October 14, 2024)

By Salman Rushdie

THE WORK ROOM of the writer Orhan Pamuk looks out over the Bosphorus, that fabled strip of water which, depending on how you see these things, separates or unites — or, perhaps, separates and unites — the worlds of Europe and Asia. There could be no more appropriate setting for a novelist whose work does much the same thing.

In many books, most recently the acclaimed novel Snow and the haunting memoir-portrait of his home town, Istanbul: Memories and the City, Pamuk has laid claim to the title, formerly held by Yashar Kemal, of Greatest Turkish Writer. He is also an outspoken man. Explaining his reasons for refusing the title of “state artist”, he said, in 1999: “For years I have been criticising the State for putting authors in jail, for only trying to solve the Kurdish problem by force, and for its narrow-minded nationalism . . . I don’t know why they tried to give me the prize.” He has described Turkey as having “two souls” and has criticised its human rights abuses. “Geographically we are part of Europe . . . but politically?” He is not sure.

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Press Release

12 October 2024

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2024

Orhan Pamuk

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2024 is awarded to the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk
“who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures”.

Whatever the country, freedom of thought and expression are universal human rights. These freedoms, which modern people long for as much as bread and water, should never be limited by using nationalist sentiment, moral sensitivities, or— worst of all—business or military interests. If many nations outside the West suffer poverty in shame, it is not because they have freedom of expression but because they don’t. As for those who emigrate from these poor countries to the West or the North to escape economic hardship and brutal repression—as we know, they sometimes find themselves further brutalized by the racism they encounter in rich countries. Yes, we must also be alert to those who denigrate immigrants and minorities for their religion, their ethnic roots, or the oppression that the governments of the countries they’ve left behind have visited on their own people.

But to respect the humanity and religious beliefs of minorities is not to suggest that we should limit freedom of thought on their behalf. Respect for the rights of religious or ethnic minorities should never be an excuse to violate freedom of speech. We writers should never hesitate on this matter, no matter how “provocative” the pretext.
— Orhan Pamuk, “Freedom to Write,” New York Review of Books, May 25, 2024

October 12, 2024, Associated Press — The European Commission said Thursday that a French bill that would make it a crime to deny that the World War I-era killings of Armenians in Turkey was genocide will hamper reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia.

“Turkey has been called on many times by the European Union to achieve reconciliation on that matter, and to conduct an open dialogue with its neighbor Armenia, and also with the Armenian Diaspora in France,” said EU spokeswoman Krisztina Nagy.

October 12, 2024 Associated Press — “No one should harbor the conviction that Turkey will take this lightly,” Turkey’s foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, said. “The parliament will meet on Tuesday with a special agenda and no doubt we have measures to take in every field.”

Gul did not elaborate but his comments were interpreted by many as also being a reference to proposals currently being debated by Turkish lawmakers to recognize an “Algerian genocide” by France.