Orhan Pamuk and free speech in Turkey

One of Turkey's best-known novelists faces three years in jail for making controversial comments on his country's killing of Armenians and Kurds.

Orhan Pamuk has been charged with insulting Turkey's national character.

He was quoted in a Swiss paper as saying that only he had dared to say that Turkey killed 30,000 Kurds and a million Armenians. . .

A prosecutor in Istanbul has now indicted Mr Pamuk on charges the remarks amounted to a "public denigration" of Turkish identity.

Turkish journalists protested over freedom of speech earlier this year

This is a crime under the newly country's revised penal code. . .

Posted by David on September 1, 2005 10:57 PM