Turkey Drops Charges Against Novelist - Forbes.com

A Turkish court on Monday dropped charges against the country's best-known novelist for insulting 'Turkishness,' ending a high-profile trial that outraged Western observers and cast doubt on Turkey's commitment to free speech. Orhan Pamuk went on trial for telling a Swiss newspaper in February that Turkey is unwilling to deal with two of the most painful episodes in recent Turkish history: the massacre of Armenians during World War I, which Turkey insists was not a planned genocide, and recent guerrilla fighting in Turkey's overwhelmingly Kurdish southeast. "Thirty-thousand Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in these lands, and nobody but me dares to talk about it," he said. The controversy came at a particularly sensitive time for the overwhelmingly Muslim country. Turkey recently began membership talks with the European Union, which has harshly criticized the trial, questioning Turkey's commitment to freedom of expression. "