Incorrigible Turkey, where Orhan Pamuk, the first Turkish Nobel Prize for Literature, is once again accused of insulting Turkish identity. Monday, November 8, the Istanbul public prosecutor’s office reopened an investigation against the novelist, suspected of having insulted Mustafa Kemal, said Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, as well as the national flag in his book Veba Geceleri (“Nuits de peste”, not translated into French), published by Yapi Kredi editions in March.
In his novel, the writer paints a purely imaginary situation, namely the inhabitants of an island busy fighting against the plague at the time of the end of the Ottoman Empire. The novel greatly displeased Tarcan Tülük, a lawyer from the city of Izmir, on the shores of the Aegean Sea, who lodged a complaint, convinced that the book contains offenses against “the father of the Turks”.
Examined for the first time, the case ended in a dismissal. The judge was then convinced by the statements of Orhan Pamuk, who, in a deposition addressed to the prosecution, assured that at no time had he sought to represent Mustafa Kemal in his novel, let alone the insult.
Pugnace, Izmir’s lawyer, also local leader of the Democratic Party (DP, opposition), returned to the charge. The dispute concerns, among other things, the hero of the novel, whom the plaintiff has the impression that he could well be Atatürk. This time, the judge complied, considering that certain sentences in the book could indeed be qualified as insults. Orhan Pamuk will therefore have to answer for his writings in court. With the publishing house, Yapi Kredi, located in Istanbul, this is where the case will have to be tried on appeal.
Old antiphon
Judging intellectuals is a full-time occupation in Turkey, where writers, cartoonists, journalists are sometimes jailed for their articles, their books or for the sentences they may have spoken. Writer Ahmet Altan, winner of the Foreign Femina Prize 2021, spent several years in prison (2016-2021) for having broadcast “Subliminal messages” on a television channel on the eve of the failed coup of July 16, 2016.
For Orhan Pamuk, who now lives between New York, where he teaches literature at Columbia University, and Istanbul, his hometown, these lawsuits are an old antiphon. A year before receiving the Nobel Prize, in 2005, the famous novelist had already faced justice for having told a Swiss weekly that in Turkey, “1 million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds have been killed”. Considered a “Insult to Turkish identity”, the sentence had won him several appearances. Under pressure from the European Union, which Turkey then hoped to join, the case was finally closed.
You have 40.39% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.