Orhan Pamuk

Orhan Pamuk is one of the greatest novelists in Europe, if not the world. He is Turkish, a man of Istanbul, where he has lived since he was born 53 years ago. His novels, which many Members of this House will have read, include "Snow" and "My Name Is Red". We are of course delighted that this year's Nobel prize for literature was awarded to our own Harold Pinter, but it is an open secret that Mr. Pamuk might be on his way to Stockholm as a Nobel laureate, had Harold Pinter not won the votes.

As you know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I am a long-time supporter of Turkey's ambition to enter the European Union. I have debated on French television with the former French President, Valery Giscard D'Estaing, why he is wrong to oppose Turkey's ambition to join the EU. I have written and spoken here, in Germany and in other European countries to make the case for Turkey.

A great writer such as Orhan Pamuk is the perfect ambassador for a Turkey that is looking west to Europe—to the culture of Voltaire, Dickens and the Enlightenment, and to the great tradition of writing and reading that separates so much of European history from other cultures and regions. Yet far from celebrating Orhan Pamuk as an ambassador for Turkey—he was awarded the peace prize at the Frankfurt book fair last month, and his books have sold hundreds of thousands of copies in Turkey and can be found in translation everywhere in the world—we have the tragic spectacle of his going on trial and facing a terrible jail sentence. The trial is scheduled to begin on 16 December—in one month's time. If it begins, it will set back considerably Turkey's ambition to join the EU. It will become a show trial such as we have not seen since the darkest days of the Soviet Union. Mr. Pamuk's trial has caused outrage all over Europe. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and the Minister for Europe have protested against it, and I know that my hon. Friend the Minister responding to this debate will make the Government's position clear tonight.

So why is this great novelist facing trial and a prison sentence next month? The answer is that he gave an interview to a Swiss newspaper earlier this year, in which he said that a "million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed" in Turkey in the last century.

That is an historical fact. He did not use the word "genocide" or seek to attribute blame. The Turkish Government have opened their archives on this sad period in Turkish history and have asked the Armenian Government to do the same—a suggestion that Armenia would be well advised to take up, as this matter must be settled by academic, historical and forensic investigation, rather than ideological name-calling in the Parliaments of Europe and the world.

Alas, however, there is a section of fundamentalist nationalist jihadis in Turkish politics, the Turkish media and Turkish state administration who reject any notion of discussing the history of Turkish massacres as history, rather than as contemporary politics. They called for Orhan Pamuk to be silenced, and he received so many death threats—a Turkish nationalist version of the fatwa pronounced against Salman Rushdie—that he left Turkey earlier this year. I met him then as a Minister, and invited him to the Foreign Office in April. We had lunch that day with the Turkish ambassador here in London, and we had a conversation as between civilised people about the Armenian deaths of 90 years ago. I urged the Turkish Government to do all that they could to protect Mr. Pamuk. But instead of the Turkish judiciary protecting this man against the death threats that he received, and the vituperative abuse that he received from the Turkish tabloid press, we have the sad sight of an Istanbul public prosecutor launching a prosecution against him, charging him with public denigration of Turkish identity.
The prosecutor cited—in effect, hid behind—article 301 of the Turkish penal code. This code is supposed to be reformed to bring it into line with Council of Europe and EU norms, as part of Turkey's preparation for negotiations on future EU membership. Alas, we see that a malign fundamentalist state functionary can take words from the code and use them to launch an attack on free speech and freedom of expression that one might expect in a repressive Ba'athist, Islamicist or other dictatorship, but not in a nation whose culture is long and glorious, whose writers and intellectuals have much to bring to Europe, and whose self-confidence as a Turkish nation secure in its identity is in no way under threat from one of its great novelists.

Let me make it clear that the issue of the Armenian massacres of 90 years ago is not a taboo subject. I was a British delegate at the NATO parliamentary assembly in Copenhagen. This very morning, I heard the Turkish Prime Minister, Mr. Erdogan, discuss the problem in a calm, sensible and matter-of-fact way.

Last month, a group of scholars in Istanbul held a conference to discuss the Armenian issue. They, too, had to run the gauntlet of court orders trying to ban the event, and were accused in the Turkish equivalent of our tabloid press of being traitors to Turkey. However, the conference had the support of Turkey's Foreign Minister, Abdullah Gul.

This morning, when he took questions after his excellent speech, I asked Mr. Erdogan about the Orhan Pamuk case. I asked him to make it clear that the Government of Turkey did not support the prosecution against Orhan Pamuk. Mr. Erdogan talked about the separation of powers between the judiciary and the Executive but, much as I am an admirer of Montesquieu, I know of no Government in the world who cannot find a way of not shooting themselves in the foot. The very great damage that the Orhan Pamuk trial would do to Turkey, if it is allowed to go ahead, should give even the most nationalist Turkish MP, prosecutor or judge pause for thought.