Arrests after plot to kill Turkish Nobel laureate

A TURKISH nationalist party leader, a veteran journalist and an academic have been arrested over an alleged plan to kill author Orhan Pamuk, the country’s first Nobel laureate, media reported yesterday.

Dogu Perincek, the leader of the Workers’ Party, senior journalist Ilhan Selcuk and Kemal Alemdaroglu, the former rector of Istanbul University, are in detention and are to appear before a public prosecutor, the Anatolia news agency said.

The news agency did not specify any charges against them but said they had been detained for their alleged role in an ultra-nationalist plot to kill Pamuk and senior Kurdish figures.