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This is good news

zuzu

Turkey has dropped charges against novelist Orhan Pamuk for insulting “Turkishness.”

Orhan Pamuk went on trial for telling a Swiss newspaper in February that Turkey is unwilling to deal with two of the most painful episodes in recent Turkish history: the massacre of Armenians during World War I, which Turkey insists was not a planned genocide, and recent guerrilla fighting in Turkey’s overwhelmingly Kurdish southeast.

“Thirty-thousand Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in these lands, and nobody but me dares to talk about it,” he said.

The controversy came at a particularly sensitive time for the overwhelmingly Muslim country. Turkey recently began membership talks with the European Union, which has harshly criticized the trial, questioning Turkey’s commitment to freedom of expression.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has passed sweeping reforms of Turkey’s legal code with the aim of joining the EU but nationalist prosecutors and judges still often interpret laws in a restrictive manner.

Pamuk is one of my favorite novelists in any language. I have read both My Name is Red and Snow. His writing is rich and beautiful, and he deals deftly with the tension between progressivism and regressivism, secularism and fundamentalism, questioning and certainty.

This might have turned out quite differently had Pamuk been less famous and had Turkey not been trying to get into the EU. Still, it’s encouraging, and hopefully it’s a sign that Turkey will begin to deal with its past and look to its future.

13 thoughts on This is good news

  1. I’d have to completely and utterly disagree with you on the quality of Pamuk’s writing: but it’s still splendid news that the Turkish government has come to its senses on this. Now if only I could get his publisher to do the same …

  3. Snow. I found the writing dense and prolix, and unnecessarily involute; and his inability to tell a straight story just annoyed me.

  4. Loved “My Name is Red”; hated “The New Life”; wondering whether this variation is a translation problem. I had the same with Banana Yoshimoto – find her writing wonderful via one translator, but it irritates hell out of me via another.

    More importantly: very pleased that this charge has been dropped; hopeful but not particularly optimistic that this will signal a better attitude towards those who don’t have his advantages of publicity.

  5. I too applaud his release and commend those you put a spotlight on the restriction of intellectual freedom. Well done.

    Now, it would be refreshing to see the same stand on principle applied to other authors who aren’t looked upon in complementary terms. It seems to me that Voltaire’s aphorism “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it” has morphed into “I may agree with what you say but I deny your right to say it.”

    Where was the concern when the father of Finland’s Prime Minister was investigated for hate crimes by publishing a book which examined the relationship between GDP and population IQ. Or when a tenured and well published professor is investigated for hate crimes for noting that there are such things as racial differences that go beyond being “skin deep.” Or an economics professor who noted that gays have different economc preferences (in large part due to different life trajectories) from straights and he was subjected to investigation and official censure. And of course, how can we forget the infamous case of a university president putting forth a few well reasoned hypotheses to explain certain phenomona and having the frothing intolerants seek to crucify him.

  7. Snappy comeback that completely misses the point.

    Also, evolution != eugenics. Peer reviewed papers in genetics journals doesn’t equate with eugenics. The point is that freedom of intellectual speech isn’t simply reserved for the non-controversial, liberally pleasing, positions.

  8. And of course, how can we forget the infamous case of a university president putting forth a few well reasoned hypotheses to explain certain phenomona and having the frothing intolerants seek to crucify him.

    I prefer to think of that as the case in which a bunch of misogynists couldn’t understand that anything but hysteria might cause a geneticist to be peeved when she was lectured to about innate difference by an economist. Or the one where it became abundantly clear that most people have no idea what the job of being a university president entails.

    Having said that, I have real problems with European anti-hate-speech laws. And had people tried to get Summers fired from his job as an econ professor, rather than from the presidency of Harvard, I would have had big problems with that, too.

  9. bunch of misogynists

    Is that really how you see the issue? One side is defined by misogyny?

    most people have no idea what the job of being a university president entails.

    So I take it you come down on the side of solely raising money and are against using the position to set a positive tone of open, and wide ranging, intellectual inquiry. Is that a fair assessment?

    European anti-hate-speech laws

    I’m with you on this. However, only one example was drawn from Europe, with the other two I cited being cases in Canada and Nevada.

  10. Is that really how you see the issue? One side is defined by misogyny?

    Absolutely. It’s hard to imagine how anyone could have been following the discussion on various blogs and not think that. Hopkins’s detractors literally could not get it through their heads that she was not a hysterical woman with the vapors, but a distinguished geneticist who knew much more about innate sex difference than Summers ever will. They could not get it through their heads that she was pissed off because Summers was being an arrogant jerk who thought his econ degree qualified him to pontificate about any damn subject in the world, including the one she’d devoted her life to studying, not because she was rendered hysterical by having her feminist views challenged.

    So I take it you come down on the side of solely raising money and are against using the position to set a positive tone of open, and wide ranging, intellectual inquiry. Is that a fair assessment?

    Actually, I believe that a university president’s job consists of torturing kittens and burning books. Loaded question, much?

    The job of a university president is to run the university to the university’s best advantage. Now, it’s possible that nobody in the room had considered the possibility that women are innately bad at math and that Summers’s anecdote about his kids playing with trucks added such new insight to the debate that it was worth embarassing Harvard, discouraging talented faculty and grad students from applying there, casting doubt on the university’s commitment to fair hiring, and yes, turning off potential donors. It’s possible, but it seems unlikely. And if the net drawbacks to Harvard of putting forth his little theory were greater than the net benefits, then he was failing to do his job well.

    I don’t think any university president is unclear about the fact that when they take the job they stop being a professor and start being an official spokesperson for the university. I don’t think they’re ever allowed to forget that they’re on duty 24/7. It’s a deeply shitty job, and I really don’t understand why anyone would want to do it. But he knew what he was getting himself into, and if he couldn’t stop himself from expressing sentiments that would embarass and harm the university, then he shouldn’t have taken a job that requires a fair bit of tact and diplomacy.

    I don’t support anti-hate-speech laws anywhere. The case about the econ professor doesn’t sound very plausible to me, and I’d have to hear the full story before I offered an opinion.

  11. It’s hard to imagine how anyone

    Okey dokey. It’s quite pointless then to engage any further on that topic so I’ll leave your assertions unrebutted.

    embarassing Harvard . .

    Did you follow the commentary that resulted from the faculty vote on censure? If certainly wasn’t Dr. Summers who embarassed Harvard.

    The case about the econ professor doesn’t sound very plausible to me, and I’d have to hear the full story before I offered an opinion.

    Happy to oblige. Here you go.

  12. Did you follow the commentary that resulted from the faculty vote on censure? If certainly wasn’t Dr. Summers who embarassed Harvard.

    I followed the entire affair, yes. The response seemed to break down pretty neatly between those who understood how universities work and those who didn’t. Those who did, including some very conservative people who tended to sympathize with Summers’s point, agreed that his comments were out of line and that he behaved inappropriately. See, for instance, Richard Posner’s take. You could argue that the Harvard faculty also behaved inappropriately, but it is very clear that Summers screwed up and spoke where he shouldn’t have and that those who criticized him were not threatening academic freedom.

    Unless the article you linked to was misrepresenting the situation in Nevada, I agree that the university was totally out of line. I also think he was a bit of a dingbat for choosing that particular example when a less-loaded one would have made his point just as well.

  13. The response seemed to break down pretty neatly between those who understood how universities work and those who didn’t.

    My turn now – Loaded phrasing, much?

    I’m personally associated with people who know how universities work, not simply faculty, and I’d paraphrase their take on this as Summers pushing back against rigid PC-dom which has stifled free inquiry, which they oppose, but his mistake was one not of intent, but of misjudging how tightly such fictions are maintained and policed. Simply a tactical error rather than a strategic one. They applauded his pushback but were too career-savvy to do so publicly.

    As for the Hopkins’ reactions, my women associates were the most incensed by her reaction and comments. The whole dainty flower imagery set them off. Perhaps the most senior women set the tone but I never saw any serious defense of Hopkins’ position mounted by any of the less senior women, whether because of lack of conviction or simply not wanting to defend Hopkins the person. I suspect that the outrage was greater in the humanities and social science departments at Harvard than in the sciences.

    With regard to Posner’s commentary:

    his duty is to speak publicly only in ways that are helpful to the organization.

    I certainly agree and would argue that breaking the stanglehold of officially permissable thought is doing something helpful for the organization he leads.

    Summers must think that his remarks did harm the university, as otherwise he would not have apologized

    I don’t believe for a moment that he apoligized because of any perceived harm but most likely was urged to do so to quell the braying crowds. This was a HUGE error on his part, or that of his board.

    The apology signaled weakness, and it cannot help a leader to appear weak.

    Absolutely agree, and with a $50 million price tag for his penance, quite an expensive mistake that won’t do much to solve the problem the money is directed towards solving.

    Although it is a highly sensitive issue, it is not—unlike the issue of racial differences—so hot a topic that no reputable academic dares investigate it.

    This was the complete surprise. We thought that it would be the racial issue that would be most resisted but with the Lahn papers, the Harpending et al paper, and Leroi’s NYT editorial, just to name a few recent hits on the public consciousness (keep your eye on major newsmagizines in the near future), well, they were a blip on the screen compared to the Summers’ fiasco. Frankly I’m still puzzled by the disparity in reactions.

    Unless the article you linked to was misrepresenting the situation in Nevada,

    No misrepresentation. I’ve got an even more extreme incident that just happened in Denmark recently after a reporter questioned an internationally renowned senior academic about his presentation at an International Conference. After publication, the University adminsitration went ballistic, took possession of his 30 year longitudinal data set, and placed all sorts of restrictions on his activities. And just to be clear this could in no way be construed as an anti-hate reaction, but is certainly a defensive assault to maintain what is acceptable thought, damn what the science says.

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