Turkish Nobelist backs writer on trial for insulting Erdogan

Turkey’s internationally acclaimed novelist Orhan Pamuk backs a fellow writer on trial for insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, saying the mounting number of such cases was aimed at intimidating the government’s opponents.

In a show of solidarity, Pamuk, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006, attends the Istanbul trial of Murat Belge, who faces up to four years in jail on charges of insulting Erdogan in a 2015 column published in the opposition Taraf daily.

Erdogan’s lawyer is also present at the court hearing, which coincides with World Press Freedom Day.

Pamuk is quoted by Dogan news agency as saying he had been reading the columns of veteran writer Belge for almost 50 years and had “learnt a lot from him.”

He expresses dismay over the mounting number of insult cases which he says are taking aim at “free thought in order to silence, intimidate and deter” opponents of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government.

“I have been writing for 40 years. I am fed up with appearing at the gates of courts, defending my friends and my own cases,” says the author of modern classics like “My Name is Red” and “The Museum of Innocence.”

— AFP