From English PEN comes news that popular Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk will be brought before an Istanbul court in mid-December 2005 for refering to the killing of 1,000,000 Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as genocide. The charges stem from an interview given by Orhan Pamuk to the Swiss newspaper Tages Anzeiger in February 2005 in which he is quoted as saying that "30,000 Kurds and 1,000,000 Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it". Pamuk is charged with insulting the Turkish nation, which does not contest the deaths, but denies that it could be called a "genocide".
What would you call the killing of over 1,000,000 people from one nation, if not genocide?
It's clear that Turkey has a long way to go in its quest to join the European Union.
4 comments:
You know there's something amiss there when one can be charged with "insulting" the nation.
If insulting one's nation was a crime, the Michael Moores of America would be on death row.
I think you can kill up to 1,000,000 and still have it be an accident, don't you? Isn't that the cut-off?
Now, if it had been 1,000,001, well that would DEFINITELY be genocide!
Where is my eye-rolling emoticon, I just had it...
Wendy, I am too chicken to post my picture...BOK BOK!
I think Turkey has much to atone for before membership in the EU is even considered, but lucky for them, I'm not in charge of the decision.
I'm still steamed about their decision to not allow coalition forces to enter Iraq through their country.
Post a Comment