Spanish police arrest Turkish writer who recognizes Armenian Genocide

PanARMENIAN.Net - Turkish writer Dogan Akhanli who has been critical of Ankara's policies and has written extensively about the Armenian Genocide, was arrested on Saturday, August 19 morning in Granada after the Turkish government issued an Interpol international arrest warrant, El Periódico reports.

The Spanish police have yet to reveal the reason for the arrest.

After the 1980 coup d'etat, Akhanli went into hiding and was a political prisoner in a Turkish military jail between 1985 and 1987. He fled Turkey in 1991 and settled in Germany.

A German citizen, Akhanli is committed to memorializing the genocides of the twentieth century, including the Armenian Genocide, and to promoting cross-cultural dialogue with a view to reconciliation.

Akhanli wrote two novels on the mass killings of Armenians in 1915, ‘The Judges of the last Judgment’ and ‘The Last Dream of the Madonna’.

In August 2010, he returned to Turkey to visit his dying father, but was arrested at the airport and thrown into prison for four months. Thanks to a campaign in his defense, organized by civil rights activists and Turkish and German intellectuals, he managed to leave Turkey and return to Germany