Pamuk backs investigations into alleged coup plots in Turkey

PanARMENIAN.Net - Acclaimed novelist Orhan Pamuk backed ongoing investigations into alleged coup plots, saying he finds details published in the media regarding the coup preparations convincing.

“It's good that the judges [and] public prosecutors are investigating these things. … I take it seriously,” Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006, said in an interview broadcast on PBS.

Prosecutors have indicted dozens of military commanders, including generals, in the Ergenekon and Sledgehammer cases, in which suspects are accused of plotting a coup against the government.

The indictment of Ergenekon revealed that Pamuk was on the gang's to-be-assassinated list.

Commenting on the charges of insulting Turkishness brought against him in 2005, Pamuk said he frequently left Turkey to live abroad as a way to keep things in balance. “It's very bad, really, because in the end, what's at stake is this: I don't want to lose Turkey. I … belong here. But I don't want to lose my [right] to criticize Turkey. So it means that I have to balance it in - in a way - that I move out of Turkey, I come back, I move out of Turkey, I come back,” he said.

As to the recent arrests of journalists in Turkey, he described them as “unacceptable,” Today’s Zaman reported.