The trial of one of the world’s leading novelists, Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s most important free-speech test case for years, was adjourned for seven weeks on Friday.
Amid scenes of mayhem and abuse at an Istanbul courthouse, the case was put back to February 7, while the Turkish government was handed the hot political potato of deciding whether to prosecute the author or drop the case.
Armed riot police in body armour and white helmets thronged the narrow corridors of the Sisli district criminal court, but did little to maintain order as protesters from the hard left and the far right hurled abuse at Pamuk and his supporters, attacked his car, and punched and kicked human rights observers.
Pamuk (53) who is accused of ”denigrating Turkishness” for stating that 30 000 people have died in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict and that a million Armenians were killed in Turkey during the first world war, must return to court in February unless the government decides to drop the case, the judge ordered.
The author of the novels Snow and My Name Is Red, who is widely regarded as a Nobel laureate contender, stood silent in a dark suit and white shirt for 45 minutes in a packed court. Judge Metin Aydin struggled to maintain order amid arguments between Pamuk’s defence team and a group of rightwing lawyers who claimed their Turkishness had been impugned by Pamuk’s remarks in a Swiss newspaper interview earlier this year.
The defence demanded an instant dismissal of the case. The prosecution demanded instant pursuit of it. The judge played for time and shifted the onus of decision-taking to the government.
Pamuk voiced dismay that his ordeal was not over. ”It is not good for Turkey, for our democracy, for such freedom-of-expression cases to be prolonged,” he said in a statement. But the government made plain it was in no hurry to close the case.
Outside, nationalists screamed ”traitor” at Pamuk, and scuffles broke out. Protesters pelted his car with eggs and assaulted his supporters.
”This is a very important day for Turkey,” said Hrant Dink, a Turkish Armenian editor who is currently appealing against a six-month jail term handed down for the same crime that Pamuk is charged with. ”I fear that Orhan will go free, but there are many more of us who don’t have his popularity and who no one talks about.”
The Pamuk case has become a cause célèbre and a major embarrassment to the Turkish government, highlighting the country’s restrictions on free speech and its determination to muzzle the media, writers and historians. The case has cast a cloud over Turkey’s ambitions to join the European Union, only two months after it received a green light for membership negotiations.
Friday’s events coincided awkwardly with the attendance at the European summit in Brussels of Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The judge effectively turned the case into an even bigger test for the Erdogan government by referring the trial to the Cabinet. Cemil Cicek, the hardline justice minister, now has to decide whether to pursue the prosecution. ”If Cicek can’t sort it out, then Erdogan should sort him out,” said the British Liberal Democrat MEP Andrew Duff, attending the trial as a European parliament observer.
Denis MacShane, the former Europe minister, was punched in the courtroom by one of the nationalist lawyers and was then kicked upon leaving the court by another man who had been yelling ”traitor” at the defendant.
”Now the Turkish government is on trial,” said MacShane. ”It needs to take a political decision over whether to proceed.”
Later, Pamuk had to run a gauntlet of protesters calling on him to leave Turkey, as he was escorted through a cordon of riot police. A screaming woman threw herself at the writer and hit him on the head with a rolled-up plastic folder.
Pamuk looked visibly shaken and vulnerable. He spent the evening before the trial, friends said, making nervous jokes about his predicament. If found guilty he could be jailed for three years, although there is a broad expectation that he will be acquitted.
The 45 minutes of court time were taken up by the defence and the prosecution side arguing over procedure. The exchange degenerated into a shouting match, and the judge, lacking a gavel, tried to restore order by wielding a ballpoint pen.
According to the judge, the papers on the case went to the justice ministry in Ankara weeks ago, but no instructions had been issued.
On Thursday the Turkish press reported Cicek as stating that he had not yet received the case file.
The arguments of those in Europe opposed to Turkey’s EU membership were strengthened by the charges against Pamuk, on straightforward freedom-of-expression grounds, the conduct of the trial and the chaotic police operation on Friday.
As the nationalist protesters screamed abuse and provoked scuffles, witnesses said, they were discreetly aided and abetted by plainclothes police. – Guardian Unlimited Â