JURIST - Paper Chase: Turkish court drops state slander case against novelist

[JURIST] The case against Orhan Pamuk [TIME profile; JURIST news archive], Turkey's most prominent writer, was dropped by an Istanbul court Sunday following a statement from the Turkish Justice Ministry. Pamuk, whose work often examines the clashes between society and the role of Islam, was on trial for "public denigration of the Turkish identity" after he made allegedly unfavorable remarks to a Swiss magazine about Turkey's stance on the mass killing of Armenians during WWII. Once the Justice Ministry declared that it was legally not competent to judge whether the case should proceed under the revised penal code [JURIST report], the court decided to dismiss the charges against Pamuk. The high-profile case has been criticized [JURIST report; EU report] by the European Union [official website] and viewed as a test for Turkey's commitment to become an EU member state. CNN-Turk has local coverage in Turkish. AFP has more.

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