A senior European Union official today met best-selling Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, who faces a possible three-year jail sentence for his views, and urged EU candidate Turkey to respect freedom of expression.
EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn is in Turkey to mark the opening of EU membership talks this week with the large Muslim nation after years of delay due partly to human rights concerns.
"Free speech and free expression are core values of the European Union," Rehn's spokeswoman Krisztina Nagy quoted him as saying after meeting Pamuk at his home in Istanbul.
"You don't have to agree with everything a writer or journalist says but they all have a right to express themselves freely," Rehn was quoted as saying. Pamuk, best known for historical novels such as My Name is Red and The White Castle, is being charged in connection with claims that Armenians suffered genocide at Ottoman Turkish hands during World War One.
The first hearing in his trial has been set for December 16th. Underlining the sensitivity of the Armenian issue in Turkey, an Istanbul court gave Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrank Dink a six-month suspended sentence yesterday for "insulting Turkish identity" in an article he wrote.
Dink denies any wrongdoing and says he had in fact called on the Armenian diaspora to reject the anger they felt towards Turkey for events which happened 90 years ago. Nagy told Reuters Rehn had wanted to meet Pamuk because he admired his work.
She said they had discussed literature and the situation in Turkey and in Europe. Pamuk's comments about the Armenians upset the Turkish establishment and nationalists, who strongly deny the Armenian genocide claims.
They were also angered by Pamuk's remarks that Turkish forces shared responsibility for the death of more than 30,000 Kurds in southeast Turkey during separatist fighting there in the 1980s and 1990s.
Rehn met Turkish political leaders in the capital Ankara on Thursday and told them their country would now come under much closer scrutiny as it tries to bring its laws and standards into line with those of the wealthy 25-nation EU.