13 Arrested in 'Plot to kill' Nobel Laureate

by Jarrett Martineau | January 29, 2008 at 09:02 am

253 views | 0 Recommendations | 0 comments

The Guardian reports that more than a dozen people have been arrested in connection with a planned assassination of Nobel Prize-winning Turkish author, Orhan Pamuk. Pamuk is an internationally respected author and one of Turkey's most prominent novelists, but he is also no stranger controversy.

After speaking out publicly about violent conflict in Anatolia, Pamuk was faced with criminal charges over his views on freedom of expression issues. Some of those arrested in today's events appear to be connected to this previous incident.

Thirteen people have been arrested in Turkey as part of an investigation into an ultra-nationalist gang reported to be planning the assassination of Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk.

According to reports in the Turkish press, the author of international bestsellers including My Name is Red was targeted as part of a campaign to sow chaos in preparation for a military coup, scheduled for 2009.

The suspects have now been remanded in custody, among them retired military officers and the lawyer Kemal Kerincisz. The latter has been instrumental in the pursuit of a series of writers and intellectuals through the courts, filing cases against Pamuk himself as well as the novelists Elif Shafak and Perihan Magden and the murdered journalist Hrant Dink.

The charges brought against the suspects are not yet known. The investigation is being carried out under the terms of a law restricting media coverage.