Will Orhan Pamuk be forced into exile?

The Spanish author Juan Bonilla comments on the situation in which the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk finds himself. The winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for literature, currently visiting the United States, had to cancel a trip to Germany last week for security reasons. "Orhan Pamuk, author of one of the most beautiful books dedicated to a city ['Istanbul'], is going to have to leave it. He has had to pack his bags because of constant threats, the assassination of the journalist Hrant Dink, whose assassin singled out Pamuk as the next victim and because of an atmosphere polluted by nationalist fundamentalism. ... Luckily, Pamuk is able to escape.  It is of course regrettable that one should be chased away from where one belongs; from the place that no one else has written about in such a way. But it is preferable to be able to leave one's home rather than helplessly watch one's house be transformed into one's tomb. Turkish ultra-nationalists are celebrating Pamuk's exile like a great victory and will go on reading the disastrous literature that feeds their sickening ideas ... ."

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