Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk charged again with ‘insulting Turkishness’ / Complaint filed against Indian comedian Vir Das for his allegedly anti-India show

By Dilip -

Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk is being investigated by the Turkish state for “insulting” the founder of modern Turkey and ridiculing the Turkish flag in his new novel Nights of Plague. Pamuk, who denies the accusations, published the book in Turkey in March. Set on a fictional Ottoman island during an outbreak of the bubonic plague in the early 1900s, the first complaint against it came in April, when a lawyer accused Pamuk of inciting “hatred and animosity” by insulting Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and ridiculing the flag of Turkey in the work.

Complaint filed against Indian comedian Vir Das for his allegedly anti-India show

An Istanbul court decided not to take the claim forward due to lack of evidence, but the lawyer who brought the case, Tarcan Ülük, appealed against the decision and the investigation has now been reopened. Pamuk was previously prosecuted for “insulting Turkishness” after raising the 1915 killings of Armenians and Kurds in an interview. Those charges were dropped in 2006 – the same year Pamuk won the Nobel prize for literature, praised as an author who “in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures”.

Law 5816, under which Pamuk is now being investigated, is intended to protect “the memory of Atatürk” from insult by any Turkish citizen. If found guilty, Pamuk faces up to three years in prison…

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/nov/16/orhan-pamuk-charged-again-with-insulting-turkishness-nights-of-the-plague


More posts on Turkey


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Yair Wallach: The violence that began at Jerusalem’s ancient holy sites is driven by a distinctly modern zeal


Meredith Tax: Biden is supporting Turkey’s Bounties on Kurdish Leaders / American silence over Israeli land encroachments and attacks on Palestinians


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