Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006, has denounced what he described as a climate of ‘fear’ in his country.

"The worst thing is fear. Everyone is afraid and it's not normal ... Freedom of expression has fallen to a very low level," Pamuk said in an interview published in daily Hürriyet.

He accused the government of suppressing the media and deplored the harassment of opposition journalists.

"Lots of my friends tell me about journalists, who lost their job. Nowadays, even journalists who are very close to the government are being persecuted," the 62-year-old novelist said.

He also expressed dismay over recent remarks by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan asserting that men and women are not equal, Hürriyet Daily News reports.

Pamuk said his recently published novel "Kafamda bir Tuhaflik" (A Strangeness in My Mind) "deals with the oppression suffered by women in Turkey ... If we were to criticize Turkey from the outside, it would be about the place of women in the society."

"Our politicians make thoughtless statements on this point as if they want to start a fight," he said.

Pamuk, a major cultural figure in Turkey, who is known internationally for his novels "Snow" and "My Name is Red", was the first Turk to be awarded a Nobel Prize.

The 2006 literature award caused a stir, coming a year after Pamuk broke a taboo in Turkey by saying in a magazine interview that “one million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in the country during World War I.”

His books have been published in more than 60 languages.