Main focus of Friday, October 13, 2006

Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's other voice

While French members of Parliament were busy adopting, on Thursday, October 12th, a government bill condemning negation of the Armenian genocide, the writer Orhan Pamuk, one of the first Turkish intellectuals ever to have acknowledged the genocide, saw himself awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The European press puts these two events into perspective.

Público - Portugal

Jose Manuel Fernandes, Chief editor of the daily, judges paradoxical the fact that "this open person, attentive, courageous, as much Turkish as European, has won on the day that France took a step down the path of the extremism that it condemns. ... I am referring here to the law that penalizes the negation of the Armenian genocide, an enormous historical tragedy. Suberbly snubbing the Europe it sees itself heralding, France has criminalized a dissonant opinion at the very moment our continent is committing itself to the right for writers like Pamuk to a dissonant voice in Turkey. For this reason I can only support Pamuk. As a universalist writer. Against the Turks who relegated him to the box of the accused and the fundamentalism that has contaminated French members of parliament." (13/10/2006)

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To Vima Online - Greece

"Two forms of Turkey met yesterday on the international scene of current affairs", under-lines the daily. "The first is well-known, it is the one built by Mustafa Kemal. Yesterday that Turkey was stabbed in the back by the French State that chose to sanction those who refuse to recognise the Armenian genocide. The French voice is still ringing this morning on the other side of the Aegean sea and the consequences will not be long in reaching France. The second Turkey is that of the future. A country that openly flirts with modernity and sees itself soon becoming an integral part of the EU, even if its traditions remain very strong and if mentalities do not evolve. A Turkey of the future that has received the Nobel Prize for literature from the Swedish Academy, personified by Orhan Pamuk." (13/10/2006)

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La Croix - France

Dominique Quinio regrets the adoption of a bill penalizing the negation of the Armenian genocide. "Once the Armenian genocide had been officially acknowledged by France in 2001, which is really what counts most, was it necessary to go even further? ... Should an attentive ear not have been leant to those Turkish intellectuals who are working on national memory and in their own country and who judge the French initiative unseasonable and likely to radicalize opposition? Do they not deserve support and confidence? And among them the one who won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Orhan Pamuk. He has been distinguished for the greatest honour of his country and to the greatest exasperation of Turkish nationalists who have taken him to court precisely for raising the Armenian question. One hundred and six members of Parliament of all persuasions together decided otherwise." (13/10/2006)

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La Libre Belgique - Belgium

"Over these past few years, the Nobel jury has often made a last-minute choice to crown writers who bare witness to their country, to problems of modernity that arise there and to ambiguities that tear it apart. This has already been the case for, to give only two examples, Naguib Mafhouz on Egypt and for J.M Coetzee on South africa", considers Guy Duplat. "It is no coincidence that this prize happens to be given at the same time as the question of Turkish EU accession is being posed along with that of the acknowledgment of the Armenian genocide at the political drawing board... By crowning Pamuk, the Nobel is also celebrating a form of freedom of thought and writing, that of the writer. It is an important question at a time of negotiations between the European Union and the Turkey and also while debates on fundamentalism are still agitating the region." (13/10/2006)

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Dagbladet Information - Denmark

The chief editor of the daily's culture section writes that the jury's decision to award the Nobel Prize in Literature to Orhan Pamuk is also a political statement: "Turkey is in the midst of a very difficult process of coming closer to the West while at the same time trying to preserve its cultural heritage. In a way, Pamuk stands for all those things that are changing too quickly for Turkey's liking. In Europe, people see Pamuk as the Turk who takes a critical view of his own country. He was the first writer in the Muslim world to condemn the fatwa against Salman Rushdie and to commit himself to the cause of freedom of speech. In Turkey, on the other hand, he is perceived as a European who takes a critical view of the nation's internal affairs. Some accuse him of fouling his own nest. It's not always easy for a country to find the right words to express its feelings when one of its most unpopular representatives wins the world's most prestigious literary prize. So the big question now is how Turkey will react." (13/10/2006)

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Der Standard - Austria

Cornelia Niedermeier comments on Orhan Pamuk winning the Nobel Prize in Literature: "Orhan Pamuk is not being honoured for having a brilliant style. His metaphors are at times clumsy and his aphorisms less than convincing. They are honouring an author who incarnates an open-minded Turkey, a Turkey that is capable of self-contemplation and tolerance. And indirectly, all those Armenians who for decades have been living in exile and whose fate remained unknown to the great majority are being honoured." (13/10/2006)

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Gazeta Wyborcza - Poland

In an interview with Roman Pawlowski, Adam Balzer of the Warsaw Centre for Eastern Studies says the decision to award the Noble Prize for Literature to Orhan Pamuk should not just be seen in a political light: "Nationalist groups in Turkey will claim Pamuk is a Trojan Horse for the West who is dragging the honour of the Turkish nation in the dirt. But I don't agree. You can't judge Pamuk's work solely on the basis of the Armenian issue. Pamuk deals with many other themes, he writes about Turkish identity, the role of religion, the world establishment, and relations between religious and lay groups. He reveals a heterogeneous Turkey whose identity is as fragmented as a mosaic. It is this that makes his work great." (13/10/2006)

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Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung - Germany

"Pamuk is not only Turkey's most important contemporary literary voice, he is also one of the few internationally acclaimed representatives of Turkish cultural life," writes Hubert Spiegel. "However, he can't escape the danger of being perceived as a representative of Turkey in the West while being regarded as an agent for the West in his own country. Not only do his books illustrate this dilemma, they revel in it, tirelessly portraying the fascinating interplay between cultures and traditions across the centuries. If Pamuk is a mediator between the cultures, then he is a very unique one. He is less interested in the often cited - if exaggerated - similarities between the West and the Islamic world and more interested in the convergence points of the differences between these cultures. They form the starting point for his novels. Pamuk uses them to create incredibly complex stories that are full of innuendo and sometimes not easy follow." (13/10/2006)

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