A Turkish court on Friday dropped a lawsuit against novelist Orhan Pamuk, rejecting a compensation demand by nationalists from the author for claiming that Turkey had killed more than 1 million Armenians and more than 30,000 Kurds. Nationalist lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz and five other nationalists were seeking 6,000 Turkish Lira (US$4,500) each from Pamuk accusing him of "insulting, humiliating and making false accusations." Pamuk was quoted as telling a Swiss newspaper that: "Thirty-thousand Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in these lands, and nobody but me dares to talk about it," RFE/RL reminded, referring to AP.

Kerincsiz had instigated an earlier high-profile court case against Pamuk for the same comments, but those charges were dropped earlier this year, under harsh criticism from the European Union, which Turkey hopes to join.