<$Pamuk to Spiegel: “Turks Should Celebrate the Nobel Prize”
Somewhat dismayed that his Nobel prize was not received with unanimous adulation in his own country, novelist Orhan Pamuk said “we should celebrate the Nobel prize” as a symbol that there does not have to be a clash between the East and the West. In a February 2005 interview Pamuk gave to the Das Magazin magazine distributed as a supplement with the Swiss newspapers Tages-Anzeiger, Basler Zeitung, Berner Zeitung and Solothurner Tagblatt, he said “thirty thousand Kurds and one million Armenians were killed in these lands but no one has the courage to talk about these things.” Pamuk drew the ire of a wide segment of the Turkish public and was accused of ingratiating himself to the Nobel selection committee. There were a number of commentators in Turkey who at the time said “now Pamuk will certainly win the Nobel Literature prize,” implying the Nobel committee would choose EU politics over the inherent artistic merits of Pamuk's work. In an interview he gave to the German Spiegel magazine, Pamuk said “the prize that I was honored with should receive acceptance in Turkey and be a reason for joy. We should celebrate this award as an honor for the Turkish literature which has an extraordinary past and great importance. I am writing in Turkish. I'm a part of this literature. As someone who is seen as fit for this prize, I am a representative of this tradition.”
Somewhat dismayed that his Nobel prize was not received with unanimous adulation in his own country, novelist Orhan Pamuk said “we should celebrate the Nobel prize” as a symbol that there does not have to be a clash between the East and the West. In a February 2005 interview Pamuk gave to the Das Magazin magazine distributed as a supplement with the Swiss newspapers Tages-Anzeiger, Basler Zeitung, Berner Zeitung and Solothurner Tagblatt, he said “thirty thousand Kurds and one million Armenians were killed in these lands but no one has the courage to talk about these things.” Pamuk drew the ire of a wide segment of the Turkish public and was accused of ingratiating himself to the Nobel selection committee. There were a number of commentators in Turkey who at the time said “now Pamuk will certainly win the Nobel Literature prize,” implying the Nobel committee would choose EU politics over the inherent artistic merits of Pamuk's work. In an interview he gave to the German Spiegel magazine, Pamuk said “the prize that I was honored with should receive acceptance in Turkey and be a reason for joy. We should celebrate this award as an honor for the Turkish literature which has an extraordinary past and great importance. I am writing in Turkish. I'm a part of this literature. As someone who is seen as fit for this prize, I am a representative of this tradition.”
