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Journalism of Courage
State prosecutors will not press charges against novelist Orhan Pamuk over comments in an interview that Turkey’s military was sometimes a threat to democracy, the state Anatolian news agency said on Thursday.
Pamuk is already on trial under Article 301 of the penal code for separate remarks that nobody in Turkey dared discuss the alleged massacre of a million Armenians during World War I and the deaths of 30,000 Kurds in the past two decades. His case has attracted strong international interest and has raised difficulties for Turkey’s as it negotiates for EU membership.
The army is revered in Turkey as the guarantor of secular order, though it has ousted several democratically elected governments in recent decades, most recently in 1997.
