Turkish government can’t intervene in Pamuk case: PM

The Turkish government cannot intervene to help a writer of world repute who could face prison for his views on the massacres of Armenians 90 years ago, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said in comments published on Wednesday.

Orhan Pamuk has been charged with insulting Turkish identity for supporting claims that Armenians suffered a genocide under Ottoman Turks in 1915. He faces three years in jail if convicted.

Pamuk further upset the establishment and nationalists by saying that Turkish forces shared responsibility for the death of more than 30,000 Kurds in southeast Turkey during separatist fighting there in the 1980s and 1990s.

Erdogan told the French Le Monde newspaper that “ the law is independent from the executive or the legislative authorities … the executive authorities cannot interfere with the judiciary”.