Month: November 2006

POPE’S SCHEDULE FOR TURKEY VISIT RELEASED
The Universe, UK
Nov 13 2006
By The Universe: The Vatican press office has published a general
outline of the itinerary and agenda for Benedict XVI’s upcoming
apostolic trip to Turkey.
The Pope will kick-off the visit with a trip to the Mausoleum of
Ataturk, “Father of the Turks,” who proclaimed the Turkish republic
in 1923. He will then attend a welcome ceremony as well as a courtesy
visit to Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer.
The Pontiff will then meet with the deputy prime minister before
meeting with the president of religious affairs, Ali Bardokoglu,
Grand Mufti and the country’s highest Muslim authority.
The following day, Benedict XVI will travel to Smyrna, the country’s
third-largest city, known as “The Pearl of the Aegean,” from where
he will go to Ephesus, the city where the Apostle Paul lived and was
captive, and where, according to tradition, the Blessed Virgin Mary
and John the Evangelist also lived.
The Pope will then fly to Istanbul where he will pray at the
Patriarchal Church of St George, before having a private meeting with
Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople.
On the morning of November 30, the Pope will take part in the Divine
Liturgy in the Patriarchal Church of St. George in Istanbul. He will
then deliver an address and sign a joint declaration.
After the ceremony, he will lunch with Bartholomew I in the
patriarchate. In the afternoon, he will visit the St. Sophia Museum.
Then Benedict XVI will then go to the Armenian Apostolic cathedral,
where he will pray and meet and greet Patriarch Mesrob I.
The Pope will also meet with the Syro-Orthodox metropolitan and the
chief rabbi of Turkey before meeting with the members of the country’s
Catholic bishops’ conference.
The Pope’s final appointment on Friday December 1, will be to preside
over the celebration of Mass in Istanbul’s Cathedral of the Holy
Ghost where he will deliver a homily.

ALGERIA TO FRANCE: RECOGNIZE YOUR OWN GENOCIDE
Hurriyet, Turkey
Nov 13 2006
Algerian Prime Minister Abdulaziz Belkadem has called on France to
“accept that it carried out genocide” in Algeria, an announcement
that carries particular weight as French Interior Minister Nicolas
Sarkozy leaves today from France for a 2 day visit to Algeria.
Belkadem recalled French President Jacques Chirac’s statement that
“Countries are called on to accept the dramas and mistakes that
they have led the way to” in reference to Armenian claims against
Turkey, and said “We call on France to accept that what it carried
out was a genocide during the years between 1830 and 1962 when it
occupied Algeria. This identification of genocide includes not only
genocide itself, but the attempt to wipe out our cultural and national
identity. They need to remember that in addition to massacring people,
they also erased the cultural wealth of a country.”
Meetings between the central-right Sarkozy, who is seen as a likely
candidate for president next year, and Algerian officials are now
expected to take place in the shadow of these calls for genocide
recognition on the part of France.

SOUTH OSSETIA VOTES FOR INDEPENDENCE
Al-Jazeera, Qatar
Nov 13 2006
Voters in Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia have
overwhelmingly backed its independence.
Preliminary results indicate 99 per cent of people voted “yes” to
independence, while in a presidential poll 96 per cent supported
Eduard Kokoity, the current South Ossetian leader, Bela Pliyeva,
the head of the election commission, said.
South Ossetia’s leadership has described the referendum as a first
step towards international acceptance.
No country is expected to recognise the result of Sunday’s vote,
although Russia has given de facto backing to the South Ossetian
leadership and urged Georgia to accept the outcome.
Konstantin Zatulin, a member of Russia’s parliament who was in
Tshkhinvali to observe the referendum, said: “We need to move towards
recognising reality.”
Disputed regions
“South Ossetia is a reality, like Transdnestr, Abkhazia and Nagorny
Karabakh,” he added, referring to other disputed former Soviet regions.
Only 55,000 people were elligible to vote in the referendum
Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, has repeatedly rejected South Ossetia’s
calls for independence and accused Moscow of trying to annex both
South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another breakaway region.
No independent international monitors observed the polling, which
has been widely criticised.
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the secretary-general of the Nato military
alliance, said “such actions serve no purpose other than to exacerbate
tensions in the South Caucasus region”.
‘Unhelpful and unfair’
The head of the 46-nation Council of Europe called the referendum
“unnecessary, unhelpful and unfair”.
“The results will not be recognised by the international community,
the vote did nothing to bring forward the search for a peaceful
political solution,” Terry Davis, the secretary general of the human
rights organisation, said.
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) called
it “counterproductive”.
Election officials said more than 90 per cent of the 55,000
eligible voters turned out for the the second vote on the province’s
independence since 1992.
South Ossetia declared independence after a war with Georgian forces
in 1991-1992 that killed more than 1,000 people and displaced tens
of thousands.

“IF THE CHARACTER IS IMPORTANT, I COULD TRY SKIN SHOW” – TULIP JOSHI
Joginder Tuteja
IndiaGlitz, India
Nov 13 2006
Tulip Joshi, who made a dream debut in Yashraj films “Mere Yaar Ki
Shaadi Hai’ and followed it up with critically acclaimed performance
in ‘Matrubhumi’, will be making a comeback again in ‘Shunya’ opposite
Nasseruddin Shah. The film is written by Anurag Kashyap. Apart from
that, she would also be seen in a glamorous role in ‘Hostel’, which
is directed by Manish Gupta. Gupta was the writer of ‘Sarkar’ and ‘D’.
Tulip has been inundated with offers off late. She has recently signed
a multiple film deal with Sanjay Gupta ‘White Feather films’.
She would begin the first film with them in portraying an author backed
role in the short story ‘Dus Kahaniyan’ which will be on floor later
this month. This would be followed by another big project from the
production early next year.
Tulip seems quite confident of making a come back in Bollywood. Says
Tulip, “I have an unusual face because of my mixed origin (her father
is Gujarati & her mother is a Lebanese-Armenian), therefore I can carry
an Indian & a non-Indian look. At one end I have acted in a Yashraj
film ‘Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai’ and on the other end I have also done
a hard hitting film like ‘Matrubhumi’. I can adopt myself easily in
glamorous as well as non- glamorous role. And I want to cash on this!”
She adds, “The film industry is so addictive and gets you like a bug.
Once it’s in, it’s difficult to get out. And I’m so happy to be back
again and will be thoroughly focused in my career. Having said that,
I would also add that I don’t mind doing ‘item’ numbers since I’m
just happy being part of films. But I don’t believe in nudity and
won’t indulge in skin show just for the heck of it, though if the
character is important, I would try and figure it out”.
Besides being associated with Sanjay Gupta banner, Tulip has also been
in talks with big banner producers. She will be making an announcement
on another biggie soon!!
rticle/26825.html

27TH SESSION OF INTERPARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF INDEPENDENT STATES IN SAINT PETERSBURG
National Assembly, Armenia
Nov 13 2006
On November 14 the delegation headed by the President of the National
Assembly Mr. Tigran Torosyan will leave for Saint Petersburg to
participate in the works of IPA CIS plenary session and commissions.
Mrs. Hermineh Naghdalyan, member of the IPA CIS Permanent Commission
on Social Policy and Human Rights, Mr. Gagik Minasyan, Chairman of
the CIS IPA Permanent Commission on Economy and Finance, Mr. Grigor
Ghonjeyan, member of the CIS IPA Permanent Commission on Political
Issues and International Cooperation are in the delegation.
Within the framework of the 27th session of Interparliamentary
Assembly of the Commonwealth of Independent States, on November 15 a
scientific-practical conference will take place in Saint Petersburg on
the theme “The Improvement of Cooperation between CIS Member Nations
in Counteracting the Current Challenges and Threats of Security.”
On November 16 a meeting of four Caucasian countries in the
Tavricheskiy Palace is envisaged to hold with the participation of the
presidents of parliaments of Armenia, Georgia, Russia and Azerbaijan.
On November 17 the President of the National Assembly of the Republic
of Armenia Mr. Tigran Torosyan will leave Saint Petersburg for San
Marino to participate in the session of the PACE Standing Committee,
where the issue of approving the Stability Pact for the South Caucasus
will be discussed.

NEW PIPELINE IN THE PIPELINE
By Christina Tashkevich
The Messenger, Georgia
Nov 13 2006
As part of the government’s plan to ensure the country’s energy
security, a USD 45 million rehabilitation of the North-South gas
pipeline is about to begin, announced Millennium Challenge Georgia
(MCG) on November 8.
“Preparatory works are over and the actual rehabilitation is about to
begin,” CEO of MCG Fund Lasha Shanidze told The Messenger. He said
the overall rehabilitation of the pipeline will be completed within
two years.
The project is part of MCG’s larger USD 49.5 million energy
infrastructure rehabilitation project. In 2005, the board of directors
of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) approved USD 295.3
million in its compact with Georgia. Other projects in Georgia include
road rehabilitation in Samtskhe-Javakheti, agribusiness development
and development of infrastructure in the provinces.
An Azeri company and two Georgian companies-Didgori and
GeoEngineering-have been selected to repair the pipeline. Shanidze
points out that this is a chance for Georgian companies to “show
their competencies” and gain experience in participating in such a
large-scale project.
The MCG says that the pipeline’s rehabilitation will reduce the amount
of losses through leakage, thus saving approximately USD 30 million
annually. It also will increase the reliability of energy supply,
reduce health hazards to the population from emissions and reduce
environmental hazards. The rehabilitation will also increase the
capacity of the pipeline.
Shanidze says in the beginning, those sections of the pipeline that
are the most hazardous and requiring urgent repair will be fixed.
Minister of Energy Nika Gilauri noted last week that conditions in the
energy sector have dramatically improved and that rehabilitation of
the North-South gas pipeline is an important step forward in Georgia’s
aspiration to achieve energy security.
MCC resident country director Colin Buckley praised Georgia’s
achievements in preparing for implementing MCC projects.
“Georgia has really done a remarkable job in getting the MCC
compact enforced to begin with, and this is the next step, which is
implementation. It’s to Georgia’s credit that things are advancing
on schedule and we look forward to having all of the five projects
under way relatively soon,” he said.
The North-South gas pipeline serves as the only gas supply route from
Russia to Armenia. The gas corridor reaches from the Georgian-Russian
border to the Georgian-Armenian and Georgian-Azeri borders with a
total length of 235 km.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

MINISTRY RE-EXAMINES GENOCIDE DEFINITION
Swissinfo, Switzerland
Nov 13 2006
Photo: A demonstration in 1994 ahead of a vote on the anti-racism law
(Keystone Archive)
A senior justice ministry official says the current anti-racism law
needs to be re-examined to modify a clause on genocide.
The head of the Federal Justice Office, Michael Leupold, argues that
a judge is not in a position to decide on the definition of genocide.
The debate on Switzerland’s anti-racism legislation came to the fore
after Justice Minister Christoph Blocher, a member of the rightwing
Swiss People’s Party, announced during a visit to Turkey in October
that he wanted to change the law.
Any act of denying, belittling or justifying genocide is a violation
of Swiss anti-racism legislation.
The law prompted investigations against two Turkish citizens, including
a historian, for allegedly denying the 1915 Armenian massacre.
In an interview with the SonntagsZeitung newspaper, Leupold said
there could be no question of abolishing the anti-racism law but
certain changes were necessary.
For Leupold it is up to historians and not judges to decide on the
definition of genocide. He added that it was not clear whether the
current law infringes on the freedom of speech.
However, Boël Sambuc, vice-president of the Federal Commission on
Racism she was shocked by Leupold’s comments.
“The law is very clear and Switzerland also signed an international
convention aimed at preventing genocide,” she told public radio.
What’s this? Federal Commission against Racism One expert group
Leupold added that judges should seek assistance from an international
institution or that the relevant clause be struck from the law
altogether.
His comments echo a statement by Justice Minister Blocher who said
the anti-racism law needed to be clearer and less ambiguous.
A working group re-examining the legislation is made of one person
so far, according to Leupold.
He added the he had not been asked to exclude the president of the
Federal Commission against Racism from the group.
The controversial head of the government-advisory committee has
publicly accused Blocher of telling lies.
Geneva prison
In a separate issue, Leupold announced that the justice ministry was
ready to consider a financial contribution to upgrade the overcrowded
prison of Champ-Dollon outside Geneva.
He said the federal authorities were willing to pay just over a
third of the planned costs estimated at SFr68 million ($54.8 million)
which the Geneva cantonal parliament is due to consider next year.
Champ-Dollon is notorious for being Switzerland’s most overcrowded
jail. It contains more than 500 inmates, but its normal capacity is
set at 270.
A series of hunger strikes over alleged police brutality and slow
justice, suicides, and a fire in the prison have caught media attention
over the past few months.
In April human rights campaigners described the situation in the
prison as potentially explosive.
–Boundary_(ID_eo+xZKJ6jO0jwlrbTYfTzQ) —

DUAL CITIZENSHIP: HOW MUCH IS IT COSTING CANADA?
By Bruce Cheadle
Hamilton Spectator, Canada
The Canadian Press
Nov 13 2006
Country looks good in retirement
For the record, Don DeVoretz doesn’t criticize immigrants who come
to Canada, stay long enough to become citizens, then leave to sow
greener pastures in the world’s economic hothouses.
“Nobody’s breaking any law here,” the economist and immigration
researcher said from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, where
he’s co-director of Research for Immigration and Integration in the
Metropolis or RIIM.
“If we set up the policy to encourage people to come here, get
citizenship and leave without paying taxes, I would do it. You would.
It’s not evil.”
But DeVoretz does take issue with some of Canada’s current immigration
and citizenship policy.
In an increasingly mobile world, Canada’s generous social programs,
platinum passport and low threshold for naturalization make this
country an attractive way station.
Whether that is a good or bad thing for the country depends on who
you talk to.
Kenny Zhang, a senior research analyst at the Asia Pacific Foundation
of Canada, writes eloquently of the benefits naturalized Canadians
abroad bring to their adopted homeland.
The foundation has estimated there are 2.7 million Canadian citizens —
9 per cent of the total population at home — living outside Canada’s
borders.
That puts Canada ahead of the United States, China, India and Australia
for the proportion of nationals living abroad.
Zhang and his colleagues believe economic considerations are going
to keep increasing that number.
China and India are furiously recruiting their educated expatriates in
western countries as their economies modernize and grow exponentially.
Canadian nationals of Chinese and Indian descent help foster valuable
trade and cultural ties when they return to jobs in their mother
countries, Zhang argues.
But there’s a downside to the equation.
DeVoretz is working on a book that involved a series of interviews
with Canadian returnees to Hong Kong, where he estimates close to
250,000 Canadian nationals live and work.
The academic says there’s a uniform response in the interviews:
“They would like to come back (to Canada) in their retirement years.”
For a country that provides generous medicare benefits as well as
social security and old-age pensions, the cost of servicing these
retirees, “could be a very big issue,” says DeVoretz.
Lest it appear he’s picking on Hong Kong Canadians, DeVoretz makes the
point that policy-makers seldom talk about the estimated 1.2 million
Canadians — including power earners such as Wayne Gretzky and Celine
Dion — who live and work in the United States but are equally part
of the problem.
“There isn’t criticism aimed at that diaspora, but it is at the
foreign-born one. And that’s where the racism comes in, clearly.”
Canada’s relatively relaxed entry standards for business-class
migrants, generous family reunification policy and short, three-year
residency requirement for citizenship were all put in place to help
us compete for skilled immigrants with the attractive American market
in the 1990s, said DeVoretz.
Now that those migrants are flowing back out, Canada needs to address
some issues.
The range of options is staggering, from Israel and Switzerland’s
compulsory military service for citizens to the U.S. requirement
that worldwide income — after the first $100,000 — be subject to
American taxation.
Germany recently decided to revoke dual citizenship after age 18,
forcing adults to decide on their nationality. The Netherlands has
changed its citizenship policy three times in the last decade.
“Each country has addressed what it feels is the most vulnerable part
of its overseas diaspora,” said DeVoretz.
“I would like to have a Canada-first policy, like every other
country has.”
He proposes a couple of rather benign fixes.
First, make all citizens abroad file an income report annually in
Canada, “just so we know where you are.”
He’d also like to see evidence of political participation, through
Internet voting abroad or some other option.
Zhang, in a paper this year, noted countries such as Israel and
Armenia view their diasporas as “strategically vital political
assets.” Other countries, such as Mexico, India and the Philippines,
see the economic power of their diasporas reflected in remittances
sent home by expatriates working abroad.
Canada, up until this summer’s Lebanon evacuation, seems not to have
given its diaspora much thought.
Citizenship and Immigration Minister Monte Solberg now says his
department is reviewing dual citizenship.
“From my point of view, that’s the wrong medicine for the issue,”
Zhang said.
The majority of Canadians abroad probably hold only Canadian
citizenship, since neither China nor the U.S. formally recognizes
duals.
If the Canadian government has a problem with citizens living abroad
for the balance of their working lives and returning in retirement
for medical care and other services, the solution has little to do
with dual citizenship.
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

TALKING TURKEY: THE E.U. ASPIRANT NEEDS FREE-SPEECH LESSONS
Theodore Dalrymple
City Journal
Nov 13 2006
The Turkish government often seems determined to strike propaganda
coups against itself. It put 34-year-old author Elif Shafak on trial
recently for questioning Turkish national identity, and dropped the
charges only after predictably adverse publicity. But the charges
will be a warning to other Turkish writers not to go too far.
In her latest novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, which has already
sold 60,000 copies, Shafak tells the story of a Turkish and an
Armenian-American family. On no subject is the Turkish state more
sensitive than on the massacre of the Armenians in 1915. Was it just
one horrible massacre among others, or the twentieth century’s first
genocide? A lot turns on the question-or at least so both Armenians
and Turks believe.
Shafak specializes in inflaming the sore points of Turkish history.
She wants a Turkey less ethnically and culturally homogeneous than
that of the traditional Kemalist vision, and thus not only questions
the sanctity of Ataturk himself and the army that protects his legacy,
but expresses sympathy for Kurds and even Greeks.
One may doubt whether the realistic alternative to the Kemalist version
of Turkey is a multiculturalist paradise, where the Turk lies down with
the Greek, so to speak, rather than a Muslim theocracy. But Shafak
has every right to her views and should not have faced persecution
for them (apparently, she has received death threats, too).
That does not make her a heroine, however, all of whose views we must
accept. She subscribes, a recent admiring Le Monde article suggests,
to those hackneyed views of the 1960s that have brought much social
dislocation to the West, and would be more devastating still in
Turkey. She is a feminist who seems not only to deplore Turkish
machismo, no doubt understandably, but also to believe that men, beyond
insemination on demand, are redundant. In reaching this conclusion, she
reflects upon her own experience as an upper-middle-class intellectual
and assumes that it is exemplary for millions of compatriots.
Her father abandoned the family when she was an infant, leaving her
grandmother and her mother to raise her. Her mother, Westernized and
highly educated, became a diplomat. Shafak was born in Strasbourg and
lived successively in various capitals, including Madrid. According to
Le Monde, “she grew up in a universe in which women were independent
and educated, where the cultural heritage was passed from mother to
daughter, and marriage and motherhood were assaults on freedom.” Having
just given birth herself to a daughter, she said, “As for me, I will
always cultivate my independence, and my daughter will be raised
like that.”
It seems scarcely to cross her mind (at least as Le Monde presents
it) that this attitude is not necessarily a useful prescription for
all of Turkish society, or at least for that considerable part of it
that does not live in, and was not raised in, cosmopolitan diplomatic
circles. In short, Shafak seems a typical example of the intellectual
who uses personal history uncritically to draw conclusions about
society as a whole.
Dangerous as such intellectuals no doubt are, they should not have
to go to jail for their views. I disagree with what Shafak says,
but I defend (to the death it would perhaps be too much to claim)
her right to say it.
.html
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

A NOBLE CONSCIENCE
By Nahal Toosi
Associated Press
Providence Journal, Rhode Island
Nov 13 2006
In another life, Orhan Pamuk could have been an escape artist.
Spend an hour with him, and you quickly wonder if he wants to be
somewhere else, or even someone else. Ask him, and he’ll admit that
not being Orhan Pamuk is a constant fantasy.
But Pamuk has good reason to be himself these days. For years, he
has been regarded as a novelist of exceptional talent. Now, he’s a
Nobel Prize-winning novelist of exceptional talent.
What does that mean for a man who wrote he once believed there was
another Orhan somewhere?
Mostly just relief.
“The beautiful part of this prize is that I’m pleased from now on
nobody else will ask me, ‘Will you get the Nobel Prize?’ ”
Pamuk says, laughing.
The Nobel is a coda to an extraordinary decade in the 30-year career
of Turkey’s most famous writer – one of steep rise in global exposure.
His works have now been translated into more than 40 languages. He has
traveled to more than 20 countries to promote them. Along the way,
he has made his share of political statements, one of which led to
a trial in Turkey on the charge of “insulting Turkishness.”
Meanwhile, the drumbeat for the Nobel grew louder and more maddening.
In a recent interview at Columbia University, where he is a fellow,
Pamuk insisted that the Nobel would not change his character or work
habits, but he also expressed exhaustion with the people who comb
everything he says and writes for controversy. He seems unsure if
the Nobel will be more of a shield or a magnifying glass.
“Politics do not influence my work; politics have influenced my life,
actually,” he says. “In fact, I am doing my utmost to preserve my
work from politics.”
Pamuk is a tall, slender 54-year-old, with a slightly pudgy face,
almond eyes, ill-fitting glasses and rumpled hair. He laughs loudly,
isn’t above wagging his finger over questions he deems objectionable,
and describes himself as a lover of solitude with a restless
imagination.
“I have this urge to stop this life and start afresh,” he says. “I
am in a train, and the train goes into a town, or it passes close
to houses. . . . You see inside the house where a man,
a family, a TV is on, they’re sitting at a table. You see a life there.
There’s an immense impulse to be there, to be them, to be like them.”
Pamuk was born into a wealthy family in Istanbul, and defines himself
as Muslim “culturally,” with religion never playing much of a role in
his upbringing. In his early 20s, disillusioned with his architecture
studies and painting aspirations, he decided he would write. It was
nearly a decade before he was published.
“Till the age of 30, my father gave me pocket money,” he says.
His artistic skills have influenced his structurally complex, visually
piercing novels. He counts among his inspirations Proust and Tolstoy,
and says he loves philosophically and emotionally layered works such
as The Possessed and Anna Karenina.
His own lyrical, dreamlike stories – often drenched in melancholy –
seek harmony in discord, but don’t always find it.
In Snow, his most overtly political novel, Pamuk writes about the
plight of young Muslim girls who wished to wear headscarves in
school but faced legal obstacles in secular Turkey. In the book,
published in the United States in 2004, every character’s point of
view seems to have merit, and in it, both secularists and Islamists in
Turkey found much to like and hate. The topic was especially touchy,
considering the ongoing debate in Turkey over the country’s bid to
join the European Union, a move Pamuk has openly supported.
The push and pull in Turkey, a country that straddles two continents
and has deep religious and secular convictions, haunt Pamuk’s work.
Besides Snow, his best-known novels in the United States are The
Black Book and My Name Is Red. Another well-received book, Istanbul,
is part memoir, part history of the home city Pamuk adores.
Pamuk spends years exploring themes before an idea is transformed
into a book. He still writes in longhand with a fountain pen.
“One of the wonderful joys of writing novels is not the writing, but
fantasizing about other novels one day you will write,” he says. “I
have notebooks, notes, so much material about the novels I may someday
write. Then, of course you realistically know you cannot write all
of these novels. But it’s like fantasizing another life.
. . . I like doing that.”
He doesn’t believe his best work is behind him, but says the Nobel
is unlikely to be a crutch.
“I’m sure that after two months when I write a page that I’m not
sure about the quality, that I will be upset,” he says. “I will be
tormented again if I think that the sentence I’m writing is not good.
No Nobel Prize – no nothing helps that. You’re alone there.”
He hopes the Nobel, Turkey’s first, has a positive impact on other
Turkish writers, but he is not convinced that it will protect him
from future political persecution, noting that he was already very
famous when he was put on trial last year.
Pamuk was charged after telling a Swiss publication that Turkey was
unwilling to deal with painful parts of its history involving the
massacres of Armenians during World War I, which Turkey insists was
not a genocide, and the killings of many in its Kurdish population.
The charge was dropped on a technicality in January.
He insists that he is merely “a novelist” writing about what he knows
and what interests him, but that others have interpreted his works
as political commentary during what are tense times between the West
and the Muslim world.
Still, it doesn’t take much to make him say something political. It
is as if he can’t bear to not be honest.
“It’s a conscience,” said Maureen Freely, who has known Pamuk for many
years and served as a translator for him. “If it’s important, he’ll say
something. It’s something he regards as a duty he can’t run away from.”
Orham Pamuk will be at Brown University tomorrow as a participant
in a sold-out, three-day public event titled Strange Times, My Dear:
A Freedom-to-Write Literary Festival.
“Politics do not influence my work; politics have influenced my
life, actually. In fact, I am doing my utmost to preserve my work
from politics.”
Orhan Pamuk “Politics do not influence my work; politics have
influenced my life, actually. In fact, I am doing my utmost to preserve
my work from politics.”