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.

The controversy came at a particularly sensitive time for the overwhelmingly Muslim country. Turkey recently began membership talks with the EU, which has harshly criticised the trial, questioning Turkey’s commitment to freedom of expression.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has passed sweeping reforms of Turkey’s legal code with the aim of joining the EU but nationalist prosecutors and judges still often interpret laws in a restrictive manner.

“This case should not have been opened in the first place,” said Haluk Inanici, the author’s lawyer, who confirmed the court had dropped the case.

Olli Rehn, the EU commissioner in charge of expansion, said the decision to drop the case against Pamuk was “good news for freedom of expression in Turkey”, but said Turkey “needs to fill properly the loopholes” in its penal code.