orhan pamuk turkeys only nobel prize laureate in literature has been charged again after an istanbul court decided to follow up on charges that pamuks most recent novel nights of plague insults turkeys founder kemal ataturk earlier in 2005 kemal kerincsiz a nationalist lawyer had taken pamuk to trial for insulting turkishness by telling a swiss journal that a million armenians had been killed in these lands however the case against pamuk was dropped at the first hearingthis time the allegations against pamuk have been made by tarcan uluk a lawyer from the aegean port city of izmir he claims that kolagasi kamil one of the main characters in the historical fiction is a thinly veiled avatar of turkeys founder nights of plague is set in minger an imaginary multiethnic and multifaith ottoman island on the aegean sea in 1901 as a pandemic hits the island and quarantine measures are imposedthe figure of kamil an ambitious and singleminded military officer whose meteoric rise makes him the president of the island mocks the figure of ataturk uluk told a washingtonbased news websitewe demanded that this novel which insults ataturk and the turkish flag to be pulled off the shelves immediately he addedwhen pamuks novel was released in march this year many people accused him of trying to get favors from the west by attacking turkey and ataturk finally yapi kredi yayincilik yky orhan pamuks publisher issued a press release in april denying that the book belittled ataturk saying that kamil was a heroic figure for the people of the fictional island of mingerthe yky release also included a statement that quoted pamuk as saying that the novel on which he worked for five years shows no disrespect to ataturk and the heroic founders of the nationstates established from the ashes of empirethis is not the first time that an author has come to the legal radar of turkey earlier in 2006 writer elif shafak had to appear before a court to defend herself against charges of insulting turkishness due to a comment made by one of the characters in her novel the bastard of istanbulpic credit wikipedia