Pamuk again challenged at home on Armenian massacres

ANKARA, Oct 13 (Reuters) The head of Turkey's parliament challenged Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, tried for commenting on the killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks, to declare his stand on a French vote banning the denial of the Armenian genocide.

Pamuk was yesterday awarded the literary world's most coveted prize, the day France's parliament voted to criminalise the denial of an alleged genocide against Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War One.

Turkey denies claims that Armenians suffered genocide in Turkey during World War One, arguing that large numbers of both Muslim Turks and Christian Armenians died in a partisan conflict that accompanied the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

The French bill has shocked many Turks who are sensitive about their history and reluctant to discuss it, while the Nobel committee's decision puts the centre-right government in an awkward spot as it has been a regular critic of Pamuk.

''We want to learn what our valued, Nobel laureate writer thinks of the bill known as the genocide law in France. What he will say will guide our society,'' Bulent Arinc, Turkey's powerful speaker of parliament and leading member of the ruling AK Party, said in televised remarks today.

''Not only I or the Turkish people, but the whole world is curious about his opinion,'' said Arinc, a known Pamuk critic.

Nationalist prosecutors took Pamuk to trial in January on charges he insulted Turkey's identity by telling a Swiss newspaper one million Armenians had died in Turkey during World War One and 30,000 Kurds had perished in recent decades.

The trial was later dismissed on a technicality but not before it brought a sharp rebuke from the European Union.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and President Ahmet Necdet Sezer have not yet publicly commented on the award, a signal of how deep the Armenian issue runs and how divisive a figure Pamuk is in Muslim but secular Turkey.

But a spokesman for Erdogan said he had spoke to Pamuk, congratulating him and saying it was good a Turk had won.

Nationalist Turks are critical of Pamuk for bringing the Armenian issue into the public forum and especially to foreigners' attention.

At the height of the nationalist hysteria over his comments, one provincial official called for Pamuk's books to be burnt.

Most of Turkey's newspapers today praised Pamuk for winning the country's first Nobel but many dailies questioned whether the move by the Swedish academy was political.

''Is the Nobel prize given to a Turk or to his claims about his country? This would be pity for Turkey and for Orhan Pamuk as well ... Because he really deserved this prize,'' said Ertugrul Ozkok, editor-in-chief of leading newspaper Hurriyet.

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