If convicted, Pamuk faces three years in prison. Last August, an Istanbul public prosecutor charged him with the 'public denigration of Turkish identity'. He returned to Turkey late last spring, hoping it had all blown over. Following several death threats, he went into hiding abroad. So the day after his interview appeared, the Turkish press launched a fierce attack on Pamuk, branding him a traitor, accusing him of having used the virtually illegal word genocide (although he had not) and inviting 'civil society' to 'silence' him. To suggest otherwise - or even to use the word genocide - is to insult the nation's founding myth and therefore Turkey's honour. Although most of the world acknowledges the genocide as historical fact, the official Turkish line has been that 'only' a few hundred thousand died during the internecine conflicts of the First World War.
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