Pamuk to receive honorary doctorate from Berlin's Free University

PanARMENIAN.Net - Turkish Nobel literature laureate Orhan Pamuk's German publisher said on Thursday he would visit Germany in May for a reading tour which was planned for February but reportedly cancelled for security reasons. "We are delighted that Orhan Pamuk is prepared so soon already to carry out the visit cancelled on short notice in February," Carl Hanser Publishing said. German newspapers had said the writer called off the trip because he feared for his life after the murder in January of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in Istanbul, but Pamuk did not confirm the reports. Dink is believed to have been killed by ultra-nationalists in revenge for remarks he made about the massacre of Armenians under the Ottoman empire, reports the AFP.



Pamuk, the author of "Snow" and other novels mulling Turkey's clash between Muslim and Western culture, has angered Turkish authorities with similar remarks. He was prosecuted for telling a Swiss magazine that 30,000 Kurds and a million Armenians had been killed during World War I under the Ottoman Turks, but the case was dropped on a technicality. Pamuk's tour of Germany will begin in Hamburg on May 2 and will also take in Berlin, Cologne, Munich and Stuttgart. He will receive an honorary doctorate from Berlin's Free University on May 4.