The Supreme Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld an Istanbul court’s earlier decision to dismiss the case of Nobel Prize-winning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk, who was on trial on charges of “denigrating Turkishness.”
The Second Court of First Instance in Istanbul’s Sisli district had earlier dismissed the charges on the grounds that the necessary permission from the Justice Ministry to launch a probe into the author had not been issued, a requirement under the former penal code, which was being applied to Pamuk’s case.
The charges relate to a magazine interview in which Pamuk claimed that 30,000 Kurds and 1 million Ottoman Armenians were killed in Turkey.
The high-profile prosecution had caused a stir globally, raising serious concerns about EU-hopeful Turkey’s commitment to the basic democratic principle of free speech. A delegation of European parliamentarians had traveled to Istanbul to observe the trial alongside international human rights campaigners, Today’s Zaman reports.
