Pamuk on trial

By Carmen 

I guess Turkey’s not the place to be if you’re looking for a country that digs the whole “freedom of speech” concept:

One of Turkey’s best-known novelists has been charged with insulting the country’s national character and could face a prison sentence.

Orhan Pamuk is scheduled to go on trial on 16 December and could face up to three years in prison for comments on Turkey’s killing of Armenians and Kurds, his publisher, Tugrul Pasaoglu, said yesterday.

“Thirty thousand Kurds and one million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it,” Pamuk said in an interview with a Swiss newspaper in February.

Pamuk goes on trial on December 16, where he will make any appropriate comments.