Orhan Pamuk

Orhan Pamuk

Ferit Orhan Pamuk (born on June 7, 1952 in Istanbul, Turkey) is a Turkish novelist.

Pamuk is closely associated with post-modern literature. His long-standing popularity in his home country was affected in 2005 (see Section 3 below), but his readership around the globe continues to grow. As one of Turkey's most prominent novelists, his work has been translated into more than forty languages. He is the recipient of numerous Turkish and international literary awards. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006.

Biography

Pamuk while writing.

Pamuk was born in Istanbul in 1952 to a wealthy industrialist family, which he described partially in his novels The Black Book and Cevdet Bey and His Sons as well as his memoirs in Istanbul. He was educated at Robert College in Istanbul. Then he studied architecture at the Istanbul Technical University, due to family pressures to become an engineer or an architect. However, he left the architecture school after three years to become a full-time writer, and graduated from the Institute of Journalism at the University of Istanbul in 1976. He was a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York City from 1985 to 1988, a period which also included a visiting fellowship at the University of Iowa. He has lived in Istanbul his entire life other than those three years in the US.

Pamuk married Aylin Turegen in 1982, but the couple divorced in 2001. They have a daughter named Rüya meaning Dream in Turkish.

His older brother Şevket Pamuk — who sometimes appears as a fictional character in Orhan Pamuk's work — is a historian, internationally recognized for his work in history of economics, teaching at Bosphorus University in İstanbul.

Work

Pamuk started writing regularly in 1974. His first novel, Karanlık ve Işık (Darkness and Light) was a co-winner of the 1979 Milliyet Press Novel Contest (Mehmet Eroğlu (* tr) was the other winner). This novel was published with the title Cevdet Bey ve Oğulları (Mr. Cevdet and His Sons) in 1982, and won the Orhan Kemal Novel Prize in 1983. It tells the story of three generations of a wealthy Istanbul family living in Nişantaşı, the district of Istanbul where Pamuk grew up.

Pamuk won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006 and a number of critical prizes for his early work, including the 1984 Madarali Novel Prize for his second novel Sessiz Ev (The Silent House) and the 1991 Prix de la Découverte Européenne for the French translation of this novel. His historical novel Beyaz Kale (The White Castle), published in Turkish in 1985, won the 1990 Independent Award for Foreign Fiction and extended his reputation abroad. The New York Times Book Review stated, "A new star has risen in the east--Orhan Pamuk." He started experimenting with postmodern techniques in his novels, a change from the strict naturalism of his early works.

Popular success took a bit longer to come to Pamuk, but his 1990 novel Kara Kitap (The Black Book) became one of the most controversial and popular readings in Turkish literature, due to its complexity and richness. In 1992, he wrote the screenplay for the movie Gizli Yüz (Secret Face), based on Kara Kitap and directed by a prominent Turkish director, Ömer Kavur. Pamuk's fourth novel Yeni Hayat (New Life), caused a sensation in Turkey upon its 1995 publication and became the fastest-selling book in Turkish history. By this time, Pamuk had also become a high-profile figure in Turkey, due to his support for Kurdish political rights. In 1995, Pamuk was among a group of authors tried for writing essays that criticized Turkey's treatment of the Kurds. In 1999, Pamuk published his story book Öteki Renkler (The Other Colors).

Pamuk's international reputation continued to increase when he published Benim Adım Kırmızı (My Name is Red) in 2000. The novel blends mystery, romance, and philosophical puzzles in a setting of 16th century Istanbul. It opens a window into the reign of Ottoman Sultan Murat III in nine snowy winter days of 1591, inviting the reader to experience the tension between East and West from a breathlessly urgent perspective. My Name Is Red has been translated into 24 languages and won international literature's most lucrative prize, the IMPAC Dublin Award in 2003.

Asked the question “What impact did winning the IMPAC award (currently $127,000) have on your life and your work?“, Pamuk replied “Nothing changed in my life since I work all the time. I've spent 30 years writing fiction. For the first 10 years, I worried about money and no one asked how much money I made. The second decade I spent money and no one was asking about that. And I've spent the last 10 years with everyone expecting to hear how I spend the money, which I will not do.”

Pamuk's most recent novel is Kar in 2002 (English translation, Snow, 2004), which explores the conflict between Islamism and Westernism in modern Turkey. The New York Times listed Snow as one of its Ten Best Books of 2004. He also published a memoir/travelogue İstanbul-Hatıralar ve Şehir in 2003 (English version, Istanbul-Memories of a City, 2005). Orhan Pamuk won in 2005 the 25,000 Euro Peace Prize of the German Book Trade for his literary work, in which "Europe and Islamic Turkey find a place for one another." The most prestigious German book prize was awarded in the Paul's Church in Frankfurt.

Pamuk's books are characterized by a confusion or loss of identity brought on in part by the conflict between European and Islamic values. They are often disturbing or unsettling, but include complex, intriguing plots and characters of great depth. His works are also redolent with discussion and fascination with the creative arts, such as literature and painting. Pamuk's work often touches on the deep-rooted tension between East and West and tradition and secularism.

Criminal case

In 2005, ultra-nationalist lawyers of two Turkish professional associations brought criminal charges against Pamuk after the author made a statement regarding the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1917 and the massacre of 30,000 Kurds in Anatolia. The charges were dropped on 22 January 2006. He has subsequently stated his intent was to draw attention to freedom of expression issues.

Pamuk's statements

The criminal charges against Pamuk resulted from remarks he made concerning the Armenian Genocide (1915-17) during an interview in February 2005 with the Swiss publication Das Magazin, a weekly supplement to a number of Swiss daily newspapers: the Tages-Anzeiger, the Basler Zeitung, the Berner Zeitung and the Solothurner Tagblatt. In the interview, Pamuk stated, "Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it."

Pamuk has said that after the Swiss interview was published, he was subjected to a hate campaign that forced him to flee the country. He returned later in 2005, however, to face the charges against him. In an interview with BBC News, he said that he wanted to defend freedom of speech, which was Turkey's only hope for coming to terms with its history: "What happened to the Ottoman Armenians in 1915 was a major thing that was hidden from the Turkish nation; it was a taboo. But we have to be able to talk about the past."

Prosecution

In June 2005, Turkey introduced a new penal code including Article 301, which states: "A person who explicitly insults being a Turk, the Republic or Turkish Grand National Assembly, shall be imposed to a penalty of imprisonment for a term of six months to three years." Pamuk was retroactively charged with violating this law in the interview he had given four months earlier. In October, after the prosecution had begun, Pamuk reiterated his views in a speech given during an award ceremony in Germany: "I repeat, I said loud and clear that one million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in Turkey."

Because Pamuk was charged under an ex post facto law, Turkish law required that his prosecution be approved by the Ministry of Justice. A few minutes after Pamuk's trial started on 16 December, the judge found that this approval had not yet been received and suspended the proceedings. In an interview published in the Akşam newspaper the same day, Justice Minister Cemil Çiçek said he had not yet received Pamuk's file but would study it thoroughly once it came.

The Turkish news agency BIA reported that nationalist protesters outside the courtroom booed when they heard of the trial's suspension and attacked Pamuk's car as he was driven away. Another group of protesters who were peacefully demonstrating against Pamuk with no act of violence was led by an internationally famous Turkish artist and writer, Bedri Baykam .

On December 29 2005, Turkish state prosecutors dropped the charge that Pamuk insulted Turkey's armed forces, although the charge of 'insulting Turkishness' remained.

Public reaction

International support

The charges against Pamuk caused an international outcry and led to questions in some circles about Turkey's proposed entry into the European Union. On 30 November, the European Parliament announced that it would send a delegation of five MEPs, led by Camiel Eurlings, to observe the trial. EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn subsequently stated that the Pamuk case would be a "litmus test" of Turkey's commitment to the EU's membership criteria.

On 1 December, Amnesty International released a statement calling for Article 301 to be repealed and for Pamuk and six other people awaiting trial under the act to be freed. PEN American Center also denounced the charges against Pamuk, stating: 'PEN finds it extraordinary that a state that has ratified both the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the European Convention on Human Rights, both of which see freedom of expression as central, should have a Penal Code that includes a clause that is so clearly contrary to these very same principles.'

On 13 December, eight world-renowned authors — José Saramago, Gabriel García Márquez, Günter Grass, Umberto Eco, Carlos Fuentes, Juan Goytisolo, John Updike and Mario Vargas Llosa — issued a joint statement supporting Pamuk and decrying the charges against him as a violation of human rights.

Criticism of Pamuk

Some of his Turkish colleagues attacked him for concentrating his criticism against "Turkey and Turks", and for not being equally critical of other governments. Also, some observers were suspicious of Pamuk's real intentions behind this statement and claimed that he was putting on a show in order to win the Nobel prize for literature which later went to British playwright Harold Pinter, drawing attention to the fact that Pamuk had never before shown sensitivity for the Kurdish problem, or the Armenian question. Some Turkish commentators noted that praising Pamuk not for his writing but his statement on Kurds and Armenians was not only erroneous in this sense, but also unfair to people such as Yaşar Kemal — another world-famous Kurdish-Turkish writer who too had faced many charges throughout his writing life for defending rights of the Kurds — as well as many other people who have dedicated a life-time to research minorities or been jailed to defend minority rights. The coincidence of the time that media began writing about Pamuk's good statements and the time of major negotiations with EU also resulted in some controversy in Turkey. Others said that Pamuk's case was more akin to libel as in other Western Democracies than it is to Freedom of Speech.

Some argued that BIA (acronym for Independent Communication Network in Turkish), which reported on the trial, was funded by the European Union and was therefore biased .

In a review of Snow in The Atlantic, Christopher Hitchens complained that "from reading Snow one might easily conclude that all the Armenians of Anatolia had decided for some reason to pick up and depart en masse, leaving their ancestral properties for tourists to gawk at." This overlooked the fact that the genocide is either addressed or hinted at several times in the book.

However, John Updike in The New Yorker for the same book wrote: "To produce a major work so frankly troubled and provocatively bemused and, against the grain of the author’s usual antiquarian bent, entirely contemporary in its setting and subjects, took the courage that art sometimes visits upon even its most detached practitioners."

Charges dropped

On January 22 2006, the Justice Ministry refused to issue an approval of the prosecution, saying that they had no authority to open a case against Pamuk under the new penal code. With the trial in the local court, it was ruled the next day that the case could not continue without Justice Ministry approval. Pamuk's lawyer, Haluk İnanıcı, subsequently confirmed that charges had been dropped.

The announcement occurred in a week when the EU was scheduled to begin a review of the Turkish justice system.

Aftermath

EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn welcomed the dropping of charges, saying 'This is obviously good news for Mr Pamuk, but it's also good news for freedom of expression in Turkey.' However, some EU representatives expressed disappointment that the justice ministry had rejected the prosecution on a technicality rather than on principle. Reuters quoted an unnamed diplomat as saying, 'It is good the case has apparently been dropped, but the justice ministry never took a clear position or gave any sign of trying to defend Pamuk.'

Meanwhile, the lawyer Kemal Kerinçsiz, who had led the effort to try Pamuk, said he would appeal the decision, saying, 'Orhan Pamuk must be punished for insulting Turkey and Turkishness, it is a grave crime and it should not be left unpunished.'

On April 25 2006, (in print in the May 8 2006 issue) the magazine Time listed Orhan Pamuk in the cover article "TIME 100: The People Who Shape Our World", in the category "Heroes & Pioneers", for speaking up.

In April 2006, in the BBC's Hardtalk program, Pamuk stated that his remarks regarding the Armenian massacres was meant to draw attention to freedom of expression issues in Turkey rather than to the massacres themselves.

Bibliography in English

• The White Castle, translated by Victoria Holbrook, Manchester (UK): Carcanet Press Limited, 1990; New York: George Braziller, 1991 [original title: Beyaz Kale]
• The Black Book, translated by Güneli Gün, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994 [original title: Kara Kitap]
• The New Life, translated by Güneli Gün, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997 [original title: Yeni Hayat]
• My Name is Red, translated by Erdağ M. Göknar, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001 [original title: Benim Adım Kırmızı]
• Snow, translated by Maureen Freely, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004 [original title: Kar]
• Istanbul: Memories and the City, translated by Maureen Freely, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005 [original title: İstanbul: Hatıralar ve Şehir]

Bibliography in Turkish

• Cevdet Bey ve Oğulları (Cevdet Bey and His Sons), novel, Istanbul: Can Yayınları, 1982
• Sessiz Ev (The Silent House) , novel, Istanbul: Can Yayınları, 1983
• Beyaz Kale (The White Castle), novel, Istanbul: Can Yayınları, 1985
• Kara Kitap (The Black Book), novel, Istanbul: Can Yayınları, 1990
• Gizli Yuz (Secret Face), screenplay, Istanbul: Can Yayınları, 1992 [1]
• Yeni Hayat (The New Life), novel, Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1995
• Benim Adım Kırmızı (My Name is Red), novel, Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1998
• Öteki Renkler (The Other Colors), essays, Istanbul: İletişim Yayinlari, 1999
• Kar (Snow), novel, Istanbul: İletişim Yayinlari, 2002
• İstanbul: Hatıralar ve Şehir (Istanbul: Memories and the City), memories, Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2003

Awards

• 1979 Milliyet Press Novel Contest Award (Turkey) for his novel Karanlık ve Işık (co-winner)
• 1983 Orhan Kemal Novel Prize (Turkey) for his novel "Cevdet Bey ve Ogulları"
• 1984 Madarali Novel Prize (Turkey) for his novel Sessiz Ev
• 1990 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (United Kingdom) for his novel Beyaz Kale
• 1991 Prix de la Découverte Européenne (France) for the French edition of Sessiz Ev: La Maison de Silence
• 2002 Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger (France) for his novel My Name Is Red
• 2002 Premio Grinzane Cavour (Italy) for his novel My Name Is Red
• 2003 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (Ireland) for his novel My Name Is Red
• 2005 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (Germany)
• 2005 Prix Medicis Etranger (France) for his novel Snow
• 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature

References

2006 Nobel Price For Literature

External links

• A Comprehensive web page on Orhan Pamuk
• The Guardian on Orhan Pamuk
• The Times Literary Supplement Editorial on Orhan Pamuk
• International Herald Tribune Editorial on Orhan Pamuk
• Extremists Threaten to Burn Pamuk's Books - IFEX
• 50 years with Istanbul Orhan Pamuk
• Pamuk's letter on his trial published in the December 19th issue of the New Yorker
• His Biography, books and interviews in Turkish
• Pamuk and The Armenian Genocide Great video by abc.net.au
• Orhan Pamuk 'Bookweb' on literary website The Ledge, with suggestions for further reading.