Pamuk’s noble prize

ORHAN PAMUK, the Turkish novelist, is an inspired choice as the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize for literature. He has been justly praised by the Swedish foundation for his sensitive treatment of the “clash and interlacing of cultures” as seen from his native Istanbul, where he writes in an apartment overlooking the Bosphorus, the strait that divides both the city and the European continent from Asia.

Pamuk’s great strength, in acclaimed works such as Snow and My Name is Red, is conjuring up his country’s past. This has got him into trouble with his own government, which prosecuted him earlier this year for “insulting Turkishness” because he raised the taboo issues of the Armenian and Kurdish victims of the state Kemal Ataturk founded.

By coincidence this most prestigious award was announced on the very day the French national assembly voted to outlaw denial of the Armenian genocide of 1915 — a move which has infuriated Ankara and will feed suspicions of European prejudice towards the only Muslim candidate for EU membership. France boasts a large and active Armenian community which lobbied long and hard for recognition of the mass killings by the Ottomans during the first world war and for legislation that mirrors penalties for denial of the Nazi Holocaust.

Supporters of the law are doubtless motivated by a sincere desire to redress a 90-year-old injustice. No one can deny the suffering of Armenians (Hitler once asked scornfully who remembered them) but it does not occupy a place in European history analogous to the racist, industrial-scale extermination of the Jews in Germany, France and elsewhere, where Holocaust denial has been a crime for many years. Furthermore, some in France are quite clearly exploiting the issue to prevent Turkey getting into the EU, despite Jacques Chirac’s formal commitment to see it in the club.

—The Guardian, London
 

Rice’s baffling trip

AFTER circling the Baghdad airport for 40 minutes because of mortar and rocket fire, travelling by helicopter to the Green Zone to avoid the deadly bomb-strewn highway into the city and holding a meeting with President Jalal Talabani in darkness because the power was suddenly cut off, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held a news conference to talk about all the progress being made in Iraq.

This kind of clueless happy talk in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary might produce great material for political satirists, but it’s not very encouraging for those looking for signs of hope in the Middle East. Rice’s recently completed six-day trip to the region, which included her sixth visit as secretary of state to Israel and the Palestinian territories, probably ranks as her least productive. She spent most of her time talking with leaders who don’t trust her about issues they’d rather not discuss.

In Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Rice met with leaders of eight moderate Arab governments whom she had hoped to persuade to join US efforts to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Instead, they were more interested in pushing for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. President Bush has said the United States will not impose a settlement; Arab leaders want at least as much focus on Israel as Iran.

The next stop was the West Bank. Last year, Rice was able to broker a deal to open border crossings between the Gaza Strip and Israel, but they have been mostly closed since Palestinian guerillas captured an Israeli soldier on June 25. It’s critical that they be reopened soon because Palestinian crops are nearly ready for harvest, and if they can’t be exported, it will result in more suffering than the territories are already enduring in the face of an economic embargo. When Rice talked about the crossings with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, he was noncommittal.

—Los Angeles Times