"Turkey on trial
The New York Times
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2005
The trial of Orhan Pamuk, the best-selling Turkish novelist, had barely gotten under way in Istanbul the other day when the judge postponed the proceedings until Feb. 7. We can only hope that this delay signals that Turkish leaders are looking for a way to drop the charges against Pamuk, who is being prosecuted for 'insulting Turkish identity.'
In a newspaper interview last February, Pamuk referred to the Armenian genocide in 1915 during the Ottoman Empire and to the clashes between Turks and minority Kurds in Turkey since the 1980s. 'One million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares talk about it,' Pamuk was quoted as saying. This was considered a crime punishable by up to three years in prison by some Turks, including some prosecutors."
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