“I said loud and clear that one million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in Turkey, and I stand by that. For me, these are scholarly issues… I am a novelist. I address human suffering and pain and it is obvious, even in Turkey, that there was an immense hidden pain which we now have to face.” — Orhan Pamuk, reiterating his stance on the contested Armenian genocide in Turkey that occurred during the twilight years of the Ottoman Empire. Pamuk’s remarks to a Swiss newspaper regarding the Turkish slaughter of Armenians have earned him the charge of “public denigration of Turkish identity,” complete with a December 16th court date. Crucial to Pamuk’s defense is his insistence that he has never used the word “genocide,” to describe the event.

Pamuk sparked the controversy with his comment to a Swiss newspaper in which he claimed that “30,000 Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it,” referring to the Turkish killings of Armenians in 1915 during their forced march out of Anatolia.  Pamuk faces trial and up to three years in prison for his statement.  

The Turkish government is playing a dangerous game of semantic brinksmanship with the EU in the trial of Pamuk; with the question of Turkey’s possible entry to the EU fraught with infighting within the European community as it is, the imprisonment of an internationally acclaimed writer on charges of humiliating the state will be an ideal explanation for some European nations for Turkey’s unsuitability to joining the European club.

Mimi Hanaoka