How to Talk To Turkey

Orhan Pamuk is Turkey’s most widely read living author. His fame and his liberal views have made him a symbol of Turkish aspirations to join the European Union. But the decision of a Turkish state prosecutor to try him for “publicly denigrating” the nation reinforced European ambivalence — in some cases, outright hostility — toward admitting the mainly Muslim country.

Pamuk is due to face trial in December for comments made to the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger in February in which he criticized Turkey’s refusal to discuss the mass killings of Armenians at the start of the last century, as well as the country’s more recent Kurdish conflict. “Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it,” he said. If convicted, he faces up to three years in jail, though few expect such an outcome. Instead, the penalty may be paid by all Turks who support the move to join the E.U.

The European Commission is due to begin accession talks with Turkey on Oct. 3, but Dutch Christian Democrat M.E.P. Camiel Eurlings wants negotiations suspended if the trial goes ahead. Pamuk hopes his case will not count against Turkey’s bid. “This is without doubt an example of utmost intolerance,” he told Time. “But I don’t want that intolerance to be an obstacle in Turkey’s road toward the E.U.”

Since coming to power in 2002, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has introduced reforms — such as Kurdish cultural rights and curbs on the military’s political clout — in a bid to meet E.U. standards. But the country’s old guard still sets its face against change. “There has been a huge amount of legal reform, but it takes time for the mental transformation to sink in,” says one senior Turkish official. Cengiz Aktar, a professor at Galatasaray University, says Pamuk’s case “is a sign of how this accession process is going to go. It’s going to be a roller coaster of a ride.”