The Guardian, UK
Oct 13 2006
Pamuk’s Nobel divides Turkey
Nicholas Birch
Friday October 13, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
Twenty-four hours after Orhan Pamuk became the first ever Turkish
writer to win the Nobel prize, reactions in Turkey are strangely
mixed.
His fellow artists have been overwhelmingly positive. Yasar Kemal,
doyen of Turkish novelists and often tipped for the Nobel himself,
emailed Pamuk to congratulate him for an award that he “thoroughly
deserved”, while the winner of the 2003 Grand Jury prize at Cannes,
Nuri Bilge Ceylan declared he was as happy as if he’d won it himself.
Others picked up on Pamuk’s suggestion that his award was above all a
victory for all Turkish writers. “It’s a great opportunity for Turkey
and Turkish literature to be better known by the world,” said the
bestselling crime writer Ahmet Umit.
Generosity has been in much shorter supply in Turkey’s mainstream
media. “Should we be pleased or sad?” asked Fatih Altayli, editor of
the mass circulation daily Sabah, in his Friday column.
Unlike the fork-tongued contributions of other equally prominent
journalists, what he wrote next at least had the merit of being
straightforward.
The best reaction to Pamuk’s victory was pride, he opined. And yet
“we can’t quite see Pamuk as ‘one of us’… We see him as someone who
‘sells us out’ and … can’t even stand behind what he says.”
Turkey’s most influential paper, Hurriyet, also felt the same impulse
to question Pamuk’s Turkishness.
Editor Ertugrul Ozkok wrote at length in his column about the
difficulty of choosing the seemingly banal headline “Nobel to a
Turk,” declaring “we all know this headline will probably satisfy
nobody’s ‘Turkish side’.”
While some have seen Pamuk as something of an outsider since the
publication in 2002 of Snow – his most overtly political novel – such
ill-disguised bile has surrounded him ever since he told a Swiss
newspaper last year that nobody but him dared to say that Turkey had
killed 30,000 Kurds and a million Armenians. Within hours, he became
Turkey’s enemy number one.
Lawyers hauled him into court on charges of “insulting Turkishness” –
charges dropped amid ugly scenes earlier this year after
international pressure – and one provincial official issued orders
for copies of his books to be collected and burnt. Not one was found.
Pamuk’s sin wasn’t just to break a taboo. By talking about such
delicate topics with foreigners, he opened himself to accusations of
treason and political opportunism. Many Turks remain convinced his
remarks were a calculated attempt to win the status of political
dissident.
The cartoon on the front of today’s Sabah shows the novelist in front
of shelves emblazoned “works that won Orhan Pamuk the Nobel”.
On the upper shelf, his seven novels. On the lower, a grey tome with
“Turkish Penal Code Article 301” – the article used to bring him to
trial last December – inscribed on its spine.
Some see the criticisms as simple jealousy on the part of a
parochial-minded intelligentsia. Others present them as just the
latest evidence of how much damage the authoritarian coup of 1980 did
to Turkish society.
But the debate is also typical of the country’s elite: determined to
be taken seriously on the international stage, but only on its own
terms.
“It’s tragic really”, said Elif Shafak, another novelist brought to
book under Article 301 last month. “This is a huge honour both for
Pamuk and the country, and yet so many people are so politicised they
forget about literature entirely.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Bloomberg
Oct 13 2006
Nobelist Pamuk Reflects on East and West in Novels (Correct)
By Hephzibah Anderson
(Corrects Turkey’s position on genocide in World War I in last
paragraph.)
Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) — As cheers greet the naming of Orhan Pamuk as
literature’s newest Nobel laureate, his political bravery shouldn’t
eclipse his intellectual credentials.
By comparison with the work of those in whose pantheon he now finds
himself, the Turkish author’s oeuvre might indeed seem slim. Last
year’s winner, Harold Pinter, has to his name 29 plays, 24
screenplays, and assorted volumes of prose and poetry. When German
author Gunter Grass won in 1999, his output in English translation
alone topped 20 works of fact and fiction. And by the time the
prolific V.S. Naipaul was summoned to Stockholm in 2001, he could
show off 14 books about him.
Pamuk, 54, has written seven novels, two works of non- fiction and a
screenplay, of which half-a-dozen are currently available in English.
These encompass a whodunit, a family saga and a haunting political
thriller. Though they unfold against disparate temporal backdrops
spanning more than five centuries, it is the urgent contemporaneity
of Pamuk’s themes that unites them.
In particular, he is preoccupied with the meeting of East and West,
suggesting that it’s an encounter still more complicated than we
imagine.
Born in Istanbul in 1952, Pamuk was alert to the Western influences
affecting his traditional Ottoman home. He draws on this
autobiographical material in his first novel, “Cevdet Bey and His
Sons,” which was published in 1982 and tells the story of one family
over three generations.
Civil Strife
A second novel, “The House of Silence,” appeared the following
year, using five narrative perspectives to capture simmering civil
strife at a Turkish seaside resort in 1980.
His third novel, “The White Castle,” appeared in 1985 and five
years later became his first to be translated into English. Set in
17th-century Istanbul, it is an allegorical tale depicting a slave
and a scholar who find themselves through each other’s life stories,
underscoring a notion of unstable identity that becomes a recurring
motif in his work. It’s especially prominent in his next novel, “The
Black Book” (Turkish 1990, English 1994), whose central character
swaps identity with his missing wife’s half-brother.
“The New Life” (Turkish 1994, English 1997) centers on a miraculous
book with the power to change forever the life of any person who
reads it, but it was Pamuk’s sixth novel that gave him his
breakthrough in the U.S. and the U.K. “My Name is Red” (Turkish
1998, English 2001) is an exhilarating detective story set in a time
of violent fundamentalism — Istanbul in the late 1590s. Like “The
New Life,” it has a book at its heart, this time a highly
controversial tome commissioned in secret by the sultan.
Risky Enterprise
Though its text celebrates the glories of his realm, the sultan has
requested figurative, European-style illustrations, and it’s these
that make the book such a risky enterprise. When one of the chosen
artists disappears, a suspenseful tale of love and deception
develops, as much a philosophical mystery as a whodunit.
The novel went on to win the 2003 International IMPAC Dublin Literary
Award, currently worth 100,000 euros ($125,325).
In 2002, Pamuk followed “My Name is Red” with “Snow” (English
2004), a thriller set during the 1990s, whose poet protagonist finds
himself caught up in a military coup in a Turkish border town. Begun
before Sept. 11, it’s Pamuk’s most overtly political novel to date,
and dramatizes the conflict between Islamists and the secular forces
of Westernization.
Maze-Like City
Throughout his career, Pamuk’s native Istanbul has been more than a
backdrop. A place he revisits time and again in his fiction, it is a
character and a muse, and in 2003 he paid it homage in a non-fiction
love letter, “Istanbul: Memories and the City” (English 2005).
He sees this maze-like city and its rich, tumultuous history as being
defined by “huzun,” a Turkish word signifying a profound sense of
spiritual loss and melancholy longing. The portrait that emerges is
deeply personal, and he braids Istanbul’s history with vignettes from
his own, permitting glimpses of his parents’ troubled marriage, his
eccentric grandmother, and his early literary stirrings.
Narrating His Country
Reviewing “Snow” in the New York Times Book Review, Margaret Atwood
suggested that Pamuk was engaged in a “longtime project: narrating
his country into being.” If this truly is his ultimate aim, he is
likely to find himself spending more time in the political limelight.
This will not be easy. His willingness to state that Turkey
persecuted the Armenians during World War I provoked anger in a
country that refuses to admit any genocide during World War I and
charged him with insulting the nation. These charges were dropped in
January, but the issue simmers among others involving Islam’s role in
modern life. Yet if any artist can pull off the trick of being
political and imaginative, it’s likely to be Pamuk.

Zaman Online, Turkey
Oct 14 2006
`Adoption of French bill not to Harm Turkey’s EU bid’
By Cihan News Agency
Friday, October 13, 2006
zaman.com
Adoption of a French bill, which will penalize anyone who denies the
so-called Armenian genocide, will not affect Turkey’s European Union
(EU) membership, a senior European Union (EU) official said.
The EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero Waldner told on
Friday in an interview with Finnish public television YLE that the
issue of the Armenian genocide has come up from time to time in
France since there is a strong (Armenian) community in the country.
Waldner assured that what happened in France and how they treat
candidate countries of EU were completely two different things.

TREND Information, Azerbaijan
Oct 14 2006
Azeri Parliament Passed Protest-Statement against French

Source: Trend
Author: J.Shahverdiyev

13.10.2006

The next meeting of Milli Majlis [Azerbaijani Parliament] has passed
a protest-statement against the French Parliament. The statement was
passed to protest French Parliament’s adopting the law penalizing
denial of so-called `Armenian genocide’, Trend reports.
The same decision of the French Parliament is condemned in the
statement and it is mentioned that this decision is contrary to the
European values, human rights and democracy.
The statement was prepared by the commission under the chairwomanship
of the Vice Speaker Bahar Muradova.

Reporters without borders (press release), France
Oct 14 2006
Reporters Without Borders regrets adoption of law making it a crime
to deny Turkish genocide against Armenians
Reporters Without Borders can only regret the adoption by the French
National Assembly, on 12 October 2006, of a draft law making denial
of the Armenian genocide a crime. It will now be punishable by five
years in jail and 45,000 euros fine.
The law complements that of 19 January 2001 in which France publicly
recognised the 1915 Armenian genocide.
`There is obviously no question of going back on the recognition of
the Armenian genocide, but legislating on it will expose anyone
denying it to harsh judicial penalties set out by the 18 July 1881
law on press freedom (Article 24a). Memorial laws contribute to the
creation of an official historical truth. This practice is
incompatible with France’s fundamental values, starting with freedom
of expression,’ said the organisation.
`Not only is it absurd that free expression – however contestable and
that is not the question – should be submitted to a constraint which
is also an additional threat, but it seems to us that this legalistic
concept of history will be much more likely to stoke up antagonism
rather than promote debate.
`It is particularly symbolic that this vote should have been held on
the same day of the awarding of the Nobel Prize for literature to
Orhan Pamuk, who was himself taken to court by the Turkish
authorities for having raised the issue of this genocide,’ Reporters
Without Borders stressed.
Reporters Without Borders hopes that senators due to examine the law
at the second reading, will show less attention to forthcoming
elections and will have the wisdom to reject it. If not it could have
incalculable consequences for all historians and of course for press
freedom.

The Age, Australia
Oct 14 2006
Fighting words from Turkey’s Nobel author
LAST year – not long after Orhan Pamuk was tried for insulting
Turkishness – an Istanbul newspaper ran an article entitled Who is
Maureen Freely? Their answer was that I was more than just Orhan’s
friend and translator: I was a shadowy master-agent whose sole
purpose in life was to win my client a Nobel prize.
It was part of a much larger hate campaign in the right-wing press,
just one lie among thousands. The campaign was so vicious that I was
sure that – even if it wanted to honour Turkey’s foremost writer –
the Nobel Academy, which shies away from controversy and does not
wish to take instruction from shadowy master-agents, would want to
wash its hands of the whole thing.
So though I’ve often used the N word when writing about Pamuk’s work,
I was probably the most surprised person in the world when the
academy awarded him the 2006 prize for literature. I was just
finishing a fiction seminar at the University of Warwick when he rang
me with the news and I’m afraid I screamed. He was calm and courteous
as I, too, tried to be on a series of radio programs afterwards. But
I am troubled that almost every interview began with the same
question. Did I see this prize as political?
No, I don’t. Orhan Pamuk has been on the world stage for 15 years
now. He is a hugely innovative literary writer whose books owe as
much to the great 19th-century novelists as they do to the modernist
traditions.
His subject is the clash of civilisations, or rather, the strange and
subtle interweavings of contradictory cultures in Turkey past and
present. In his historical novels – The White Castle and My Name is
Red – he presents dark metaphors that illuminate the contradictions
of contemporary life. In his contemporary novels, he pierces the
silences enforced by state ideology to expose the truth about power
and its masters.
But like all important writers in Turkey, he has often been asked to
speak on matters of political principle. He has spoken most
consistently and eloquently on free expression.
For many years, his high profile in the West allowed him more freedom
than most. That ended in February 2005 when he told a Swiss
journalist that though a million Armenians had been killed in the
country of his birth, no one talked about it. The firestorm in the
Turkish press was so fierce that he briefly left the country.
And then there was the lawsuit, which seemed to come at such an
awkward time for Turkey. Here it was, trying to join the EU. But here
it was, prosecuting yet another writer for his words. It wasn’t doing
itself any favours, was it?
The story has moved on – as many as 80 writers, scholars, artists,
and activists have been prosecuted for insulting state, the
judiciary, or Turkishness itself; 45 more cases are set to go to
trial before year’s end.
The ultranationalist lawyers who brought the case against Pamuk hope
to to trample democratic debate. Here they have not (yet) succeeded.
The intelligentsia is putting up a good fight. But it has come at a
cost for those who are known in the West, and especially for Orhan.
His life story eclipsed the stories in his books.
My hope is that this will change now. The Nobel has gone not to the
man and not to his politics but to his words, his characters, and his
ideas. Born into a culture that had (recently) clipped its Eastern
roots, and that was struggling to define itself as Western, he has
(like all of us who grew up in Istanbul) grappled with double
identities all his life. What might have seemed a curse to a young
man is the source from which his imagination feeds.
He has taken both sides of his clashing heritage and made them whole.
Though he is often praised for making Turkey “visible”, his greater
achievement is to make the West see what it looks like from the
outside.
Now that he has won the prize of prizes, will he be allowed to shed
his political persona and go back to his desk? It’s too early to
tell. He is still a controversial figure in Turkey. He will, no
doubt, continue to challenge its official history when he thinks it
right to do so, just as he will continue to challenge Islamophobia
and ultranationalism in the West. But now, at last, his books will
come first.
GUARDIAN
Author Maureen Freely was born in the US but grew up in Istanbul. Her
translation of Orhan Pamuk’s Snow was published in 2004. She is a
senior lecturer in the Warwick writing program in the Department of
English at the University of Warwick.

The Age, Australia
Oct 14 2006
A wake-up call better late than never
October 13, 2006
NOBEL literature laureate Orhan Pamuk said he was honoured to win,
even though his initial reaction was confusion about the late-night
call.
“It’s such a great honour, such a great pleasure,” Pamuk told
journalists at Columbia University, New York, where he studied in the
1980s.
“I’m very happy about the prize.”
The boyish Turkish author, now a fellow at Columbia, said the award
was a cause for celebration not just for him, but his country and
culture.
“I think that this is first of all an honour bestowed upon the
Turkish language, Turkish culture, Turkey and also recognition of my
labours,” he said.
The decision to award the prize to a writer and campaigner who is an
advocate of Turkey’s European ambitions, and a harsh critic of
authoritarian trends in his country, comes as a boon to freedom of
expression and to Turkey’s beleaguered literary class.
But Pamuk, a hero to Istanbul liberals, is reviled by his country’s
nationalists, who see him as a traitor.
A 54-year-old native and chronicler of Istanbul who has devoted
himself to his writing for more than 30 years, Pamuk was in New York
when the 1.1 million ($A1.8 million) prize was announced in
Stockholm on Thursday.
Sporting a wide grin, the novelist was ebullient as he described how
he learned of the award. His first reaction? “Who is calling me in
the middle of the night? I have a new mobile, there’s something wrong
with my mobile.”
Pamuk, who has courted controversy in Turkey by tackling such
subjects as the treatment of the Kurdish minority and the Ottoman
massacre of Armenians during World War I, declined to be drawn by
reporters’ questions.
“This is a time for celebration, for enjoying this, rather than
making political comments,” he told journalists.
When pushed, he said: “This is a day for celebration, for being
positive.
“I have lots of critical energy deep in me but I’m not going to
express it today.
“I want to tell my readers, both in Turkey and all over the world,
that this prize will not change my working habits, my devotion to
this art.”

NTV MSNBC, Turkey
Oct 14 2006
France no longer home of freedom: Gul
The Turkish Foreign Minister said that the vote of the French
parliament was shameful.
NTV-MSNBC
Güncelleme: 17:05 TSÝ 13 Ekim 2006 CumaANKARA – France will have to
live with the consequences of the French parliament’s decision to
approve a bill making it a criminal offence to deny allegations that
Armenians were massacred by the Ottoman Empire, Turkey’s Foreign
Minister said late Thursday.

Speaking at a joint press conference with visiting Afghani Foreign
Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta in Ankara, Foreign Minister Abdullah
Gul said that France could no longer describe itself as the home of
freedoms. `France will live with this shame,’ Gul said. `I hope that
France will take a backward step from this dead end.’ Turkey will
take every step necessary to counter the impression created by the
passing of the legislation, he said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

NTV MSNBC, Turkey
Oct 14 2006
Turkey slams passing of French genocide denial bill
The Armenian Patriarch warned that the new law will strengthen the
hands of far right nationalists in both France and Turkey.
NTV-MSNBC
Güncelleme: 17:05 TSÝ 13 Ekim 2006 CumaANKARA / ISTANBUL – The
passing of controversial legislation by the French parliament
outlawing the denial of allegations that the Ottoman Empire massacred
Armenians during the First World War has sparked an outpouring of
criticism across Turkey. The bill, approved by the lower house of the
French parliament on Thursday, foresees fines of 45,000 euros and up
to one year behind bars for those found guilty of denying the so
called genocide.

Deniz Baykal, chairman of the opposition Republican People’s Party
(CHP), said it was impossible to mortgage history by making such
decisions. `This decision aims at preventing talks over historical
facts,’ he said. Mehmet Agar, the leader of the opposition True Path
Party (DYP), said that the decision was a violation of democracy,
human rights and freedom of expression. `It will lead to
irrecoverable damage in the bilateral relations between Turkey and
France,’ Agar said.
Another to criticise the decision of the French parliament was Mesrob
II, the Armenian Patriarch in Turkey, who said that the new
legislation will strengthen the hands of not only Turkish but also
Armenian extreme nationalist and racist groups. `The French, who have
put several obstacles before Turkey on its road to the EU, have given
a major blow to the very limited dialogue between Turkey and
Armenia,’ he said. `I think that this resolution, adopted by the
French parliament, is anti-democratic because it limits personal
freedom of expression.’
Turkey’s leading business lobby group, the Turkish Industrialists’
and Businessmen’s Association (TUSIAD), said that the vote of the
French parliament was a great mistake and was contrary to the
European Union’s philosophy and its standards of democracy. In a
statement issued late Thursday TUSIAD said that France had mortgaged
its foreign policy in order to gain the votes of the Armenians in
France. French politicians didn’t have the required authority and
expertise to make a judgement on the issue, the statement said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Zaman, Turkey
Oct 14 2006
An Irony of Fate
Friday, October 13, 2006
zaman.com
This is an irony of fate. Orhan Pamuk, who was tried for saying
`30,000 Kurds and one million Armenians were killed in these lands,’
was awarded the Nobel literature prize on the same day the Armenian
genocide bill was passed by the French parliament.
These two points are being linked in every comment about the issue.
Pamuk, who gained a considerable number of enemies with his
statement, is bound to hear comments that if somebody curses Turkey
like he did, that person will also get a prize.
A big `Armenian shadow’ will be cast over this prize. In all
likelihood, Pamuk himself is not happy with such a coincidence,
either.
If all these things had not happened, such as Pamuk saying such big
words, the subsequent controversy and the Nobel prize being announced
right after the bill penalizing those who deny the purported Armenian
genocide, we would now be talking about Pamuk’s words, his literary
competence and about the doors this prize would open for Turkish
literature.
However, whether desired or not, his words will follow him like a
shadow and some will regard the Nobel prize as an award for Pamuk’s
words and behaviors that `offended’ Turkey and the Turkish people.
Aside from all these discussions, Orhan Pamuk is Turkey’s most
well-known novelist.
His `opposing’ attitude and `discourse’ certainly play a part in his
worldwide fame.
As a matter of fact, it is no longer an author’s works that make him
famous in today’s world, just as it is not only `literary competence’
that influences the Swedish Academy’s decision who receives the Nobel
prize.
All these will cause endless conflicts in both literary and political
circles.
However, the truth despite all is that Pamuk has been awarded the
Nobel Literature Prize in 2006. It is impossible to deny or ignore
this.
Political conflicts, even crucial social events, may be forgotten
with time but literature has an ability to resist time. Even though
the Nobel Prize always causes controversy and it is claimed to be
given for political reasons, it is the most respectable literature
prize in the world.
None of today’s conflicts will be remembered within a 100 years’ time
but Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish novelist’s name will remain in the list of
the Nobel literature prize.
If we leave all conflicts, praises and criticisms alone, Pamuk’s
Nobel Prize will increase his worldwide fame as well as the interest
in the Turkish literature. It can also be said that Pamuk will serve
as an impulsive force in Turkish literature’s project of opening up
to the outer world.
Ali Colak
———————————————- ———————————-
‘The Prize will not Change me and my Works’
Holding a press conference in New York yesterday, Pamuk stated the
prize was given not only to him but also to the Turkish language,
Turkish culture and Turkey and said he was very happy and proud of
this.
Reminding the reporters that this was the first time Turkey was
awarded a Nobel prize, Pamuk said `I am very happy, at least, for
this reason.’
Speaking at the library of Columbia University’s Center on Global
Thought where he teaches as a guest lecturer, Pamuk said he wrote The
Black Book in the small rooms of this university 22 years ago.
`I am happy to receive the news on the prize at the same university,’
Pamuk said, adding the award wouldn’t change him or his work.
Stating he found out the news upon a phone call at midnight, Pamuk
said, `The Swedish Academy of Sciences chairman called me. He said I
was awarded the prize and asked whether I would take it. I said I
would take it. Claims that I would decline it are baseless.’
Emrah Ulker, New York