TURKEY: State prosecutors will not press charges against best-selling novelist Orhan Pamuk over comments in an interview that Turkey's military was sometimes a threat to democracy, the state Anatolian news agency said yesterday.
Pamuk is already on trial under Article 301 of the penal code for separate remarks that no one in Turkey dared discuss the alleged massacre of one million Armenians during the first World War and the deaths of 30,000 Kurds in the past two decades.
His case has raised doubts about Turkey's commitment to freedom of expression as it negotiates for EU membership.
Pamuk's publishers had said earlier this week that the author might face a second court case under Article 301 for allegedly insulting Turkey's armed forces during an October interview with German newspaper Die Welt. However, Anatolia said prosecutors had decided not to pursue Pamuk after looking into the case.
A group of nationalist lawyers who had asked the prosecutors to investigate his remarks plan to appeal the decision.
The army is revered in Turkey as the guarantor of the country's secular order, though it has ousted several democratically elected governments, most recently in 1997.
Article 301 makes it an offence to insult "Turkishness" or state institutions. Yesterday, foreign minister Abdullah Gul said the government may need to change the article. Prime minister Tayyip Erdogan vowed to remove all barriers to free speech. - (Reuters)