"…What am I to make of a country [Turkey] that insists that the Turks, unlike their Western neighbors, are a compassionate people, incapable of genocide, while nationalist political groups are pelting me with death threats?"

– Orhan Pamuk, the most famous contemporary Turkish novelist
The New Yorker, page 34
19 December 2005

Best-selling Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk makes a speech during his short appearance at a meeting of the writers, who gathered to show their support a day before his trial in Istanbul December 15, 2005. The trial of Pamuk, which opens on Friday, is a critical test of Turkey's commitment to freedom of expression, which risks straining its ties with the European Union. Pamuk faces up to three years in jail if convicted of insulting 'Turkishness' with his comments that a million Armenians died in World War One massacres and that 30,000 Kurds were killed in more recent decades. Ankara has always denied charges of genocide against Armenians. REUTERS/Stringer

p.s. Orhan Pamuk's trial for "insulting Turkishness" (read admitting the Armenian genocide) will take place this Friday. BBC published an article on it today.