MADRID - Some of the biggest names in international literature have thrown their weight behind Turkish author Orhan Pamuk, who is facing charges of insulting the Turkish nation for comments he made over the alleged massacre of Armenians during the First World War. Nobel prize winners Jose Saramago, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Günter Grass have issued a written statement offering support to Pamuk over charges he is facing.
The statement said that court case could not be linked with a state of law. The statement also said that the statements made on incidents in history by Pamuk did not represent a crime.
In an interview with a Swiss magazine earlier this year, Pamuk said that up to a million Armenians had been killed by the Ottoman Empire during the First World War and that 30,000 Kurds had died during the conflict between the Turkish state and Kurdish separatists.
Other famed writers giving their support to the statement were Umberto Eco, Carlos Fuentes, Juan Goytisolo, John Updike and Mario Vargas Llosa.
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