Istanbul
Under pressure from the European Union, an Istanbul court this week dropped charges of “insulting Turkish identity” against noted author Orhan Pamuk. Pamuk was being prosecuted for telling a newspaper interviewer that the mass killings of Armenians by the Ottomans during World War I amounted to genocide—a claim supported by most historians but denied by Turkey. The case became an embarrassment to Turkey, which is seeking membership in the E.U. and can’t afford to be seen as suppressing free speech. But simply dropping the case may not placate European critics. “It is not an overall resolution for other intellectuals and writers that still face similar charges in Turkey,” said Vecdi Sayar, the head of the international writers’ group PEN.
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