TURKEY: A Turkish court dropped criminal charges against best-selling author Orhan Pamuk yesterday, a defence lawyer said, in a move which the European Union described as "good news" for freedom of speech in Turkey.
The trial had cast a shadow over the Muslim country's drive to join the 25-nation EU bloc after it began membership talks last October.
"The court has decided to drop the case. There will not be a hearing . . . because there is no need for that," lawyer Haluk Inanici said. "This is obviously good news for Mr Pamuk, but it's also good news for freedom of expression in Turkey," EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn said in a statement. He hoped this would open the way for a "positive outcome" in other cases in Turkey.
Pamuk, seen by many as a Nobel Literature Prize contender, was charged under article 301 of a new penal code, which forbids insulting Turkish identity. The EU has called on Turkey to amend the article which has allowed nationalist prosecutors, to the government's discomfort, to put Pamuk and scores of other writers and academics on trial for insulting "Turkishness" or state institutions.
Pamuk upset nationalists by telling a Swiss newspaper last year nobody in Turkey dared mention the killing of a million Armenians during the first World War or 30,000 Kurds in recent decades.
Mr Inanici added that the ruling was not binding for other similar cases.