In awarding this year's Nobel Prize for Literature to Turkey's most famous and controversial novelist, Orhan Pamuk, the award committee was as much making a point about freedom of conscience and expression, as honouring the literary achievements of this great writer. Indeed Pamuk has probably gained wider fame and acclaim for his brave and outspoken comments on his country's amnesia regarding its treatment of Ottoman Armenians, than for his accomplishments as a powerful and innovative contemporary novelist.
Some years ago when receiving a German peace prize, Pamuk said he considered it a shortcoming "if a Turkish writer today does not deal with the Kurds, with minorities in Turkey and with the unspoken dark moments in our history". Pamuk has been a moral voice dealing directly and bluntly with those dark moments, reminding fellow Turks of deeds and events written out of their country's history.
In touching on these taboo subjects, Pamuk the truth-teller landed himself in trouble for the crime of having "publicly denigrated Turkish identity". He became the subject of a hate campaign and his books were burned. Around that time he wrote that he lived in a country that "honours its pashas, saints, and policemen at every opportunity but refuses to honour its writers until they have spent years in courts and in prisons".
His own trial and likely prison sentence were probably only averted due to his international profile and Turkey's aspirations for entry into the European Union. Pamuk himself has been an ardent advocate for accession, arguing that the survival of modern Turkey and its more democratic elements depends on inclusion in the European fold. In his novels Pamuk has reflected the contradictions of modern Turkey, showing himself to be a writer of immense insight into the complexity of those contradictions.
The significance and prestige of the Nobel Prize stands greatly enhanced by the decision to make Pamuk this year's recipient, particularly as he follows Harold Pinter in receiving the honour, another writer equally vociferous and vigorous in his criticism of human rights abuses and equally committed to speaking out on matters of principle when it comes to political and moral issues.
In a week in which a Russian journalist was murdered for her pursuit of the truth in Chechnya, it is indeed fitting that the Nobel Prize goes to a writer who sees it as his duty to light the way in the cause of freedom of speech and in the names of those with no one else to speak on their behalf.