Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's Nobel Prize-winning author, said he may face new compensation claims for remarks he made about the World War One-era killing of Armenians, despite an earlier acquittal in a criminal trial, the Anatolian news ageny said on Saturday.
Turkey's Court of Appeals this week overturned a lower court decision that had dismissed the claims of personal damages against Pamuk, 56, paving the way for a new case.
“I understand that I could be tried again, but nothing is certain,” said Pamuk, who was speaking at a book fair in the Italian city of Torino, according to state-run Anatolian.
“In any case, I'm not apprehensive.”
The compensation suit stemmed from an interview with a Swiss magazine in 2005 when Pamuk said “30,000 Kurds and a million Armenians were killed” in Turkey. Turkey denies Armenians were systematically killed between 1915 and 1923, saying that both sides suffered losses in internecine fighting during the break-up of the Ottoman Empire.
The interview sparked a criminal case, but Pamuk was cleared of all charges and avoided a jail sentence on a technicality in 2006 amid an international outcry over the trial.
The author of Snow and My Name Is Red went on to win the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature.
{{/usCountry}}The author of Snow and My Name Is Red went on to win the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature.
{{/usCountry}}The civil suit's six plaintiffs, who seek $23 million in damages, include members of a support group for families of soldiers killed fighting Kurdish separatists and a nationalist lawyer who brought the criminal case against Pamuk, Radikal newspaper said.