MUSLIM HATE OF WRITERS!
BERLIN -- The European Union official overseeing Turkey's admission to the 25-nation bloc warned yesterday that Turkey's prosecution of a bestselling author for insulting ''Turkishness" could damage the country's chances of joining the EU.
''It is not Orhan Pamuk who will stand trial, but Turkey," EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said in an unusually blunt statement released in Brussels. ''This is a litmus test of whether Turkey is seriously committed to freedom of expression and to reforms that enhance the rule of law."
Pamuk, 53, Turkey's best-known novelist, is expected to go on trial today for stating in a Swiss magazine interview what most historians regard as unassailable facts: That some 1 million Armenians were slaughtered by Turks in the 1915-1918 genocide and that thousands of ethnic Kurds have lost their lives in more recent civil strife in modern Turkey.
The case has stirred outrage across Europe, where there is deepening opposition to allowing Turkey -- whose population is largely Muslim and whose landmass lies almost entirely in Asia -- to join an economic and political confederation whose most basic membership requirement is a commitment to democracy and to such values as freedom of speech.
Membership is considered vital to Turkey's economic future. The admission process is expected to take years.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is among the European leaders opposed to granting admission to Turkey, partly because of the country's poor human rights record and wavering attitudes toward democratic principles, including the idea that citizens have a right to criticize the government and national institutions.
Such activist organizations as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have criticized Turkey for bringing criminal charges against Pamuk and dozens of other writers and scholars for allegedly defaming ''Turkishness and Turkish national institutions," usually for making public remarks about historical events considered strictly taboo.
The cases, brought by prosecutors, come even as the government in Ankara has proclaimed a greater dedication to individual freedoms in its effort to join the European Union.
''From the world-renowned poet Nazin Hikmet in the 1930s to Orhan Pamuk today, Turkish judges have prosecuted and imprisoned the country's greatest writers," Holly Cartner, director for Europe and Central Asia for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement from Istanbul. ''A Turkish judge has to make a truly strong declaration to prove those days are over."
But prosecutors appeared determined to press ahead with a high-profile prosecution despite the international uproar -- and despite the warnings from Europe. Rehn's statements marked the first time that the EU has unequivocally linked Turkey's hopes for EU membership to an attack on free speech that has drawn criticism across the Western world.
''The trial of a novelist who expressed a nonviolent opinion casts a shadow over the accession negotiations between Turkey and the EU," said Rehn, who is Finnish. ''Considering the number of recent prosecutions, it appears that [Turkey's] new penal code does not provide sufficient protection for freedom of expression."
Pamuk, author of such highly praised bestsellers as ''Snow" and ''My Name is Red," has had his works translated into 30 languages.
At least 60 other Turkish writers, scholars, and publishers presently face charges under Turkey's recently revised ''Article 301," according to Amnesty International. Among other things, the modified penal code makes it a criminal offense to criticize ''Turkishness," national institutions, or the founder of the republic, Mustafa Kemal -- known as ''Ataturk."
If convicted, Pamuk faces up to three years behind bars, although most analysts believe it extremely unlikely he will be imprisoned if found guilty in Sisly Primary Court No. 2 in Istanbul. But a guilty verdict -- even one accompanied by a paltry fine -- would send a shocking message to European nations watching closely as Turkey strives to modernize both its political system and its economy.
''Pamuk's conviction or a postponement of his trial would signal a serious reverse to recent reforms in Turkey," Cartner said.
Charges were brought against Pamuk after he angered Turkish nationalists, fundamentalist Muslims, and many ordinary Turks by saying in a February interview with Switzerland's Das Magazin weekly that ''thirty thousand Kurds and one million Armenians were killed in these lands."
Although few historians doubt that hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed in Turkey, discussion of the topic remains largely off-limits in Turkey and the government denies that such a genocide occurred. The taboo was lifted slightly this year when Istanbul's Bilgi University hosted a cautious conference on the ''Armenian question" -- a gathering that triggered angry protests.
''What happened to the Ottoman Armenians in 1915 was a major thing that was hidden from the Turkish nation -- it was a taboo," Pamuk told the BBC. ''But we have to be able to talk about the past."
Pamuk's other allusion was to the killing of thousands of ethnic Kurds during clashes between Turkish armed forces and Kurdish insurgents in the 1980s and 1990s. The exact numbers of casualties remain unclear, and many Turkish civilians also died at the hands of avowed Kurdish ''freedom fighters," but there is no doubt many innocent lives were lost.
Many Turks, however, believe that Pamuk insulted the nation.
''He overstepped the mark," nationalist organizer Kemal Kerincsiz told Turkish reporters. ''Orhan Pamuk should not have played with history, and with the sentiments of Turks."