Turks drop Pamuk case

A TURKISH court yesterday dropped charges against the country’s best-known novelist for insulting “Turkishness,” ending a high-profile trial that outraged Western observers and cast doubt on Turkey’s commitment to free speech.

Orhan Pamuk went on trial for telling a Swiss newspaper in February that Turkey is unwilling to deal with two of the most painful episodes in recent Turkish history: the massacre of Armenians during World War I, which Turkey insists was not a planned genocide, and recent guerrilla fighting in Turkey’s overwhelmingly Kurdish south-east.

“Thirty-thousand Kurds and one million Armenians were killed in these lands, and nobody but me dares to talk about it,” he said.