Democracy doesn't exist in Turkey, people are lynched for political comments: Orhan Pamuk

Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk said in a recent interview that democracy doesn't exist in Turkey, adding that people are assaulted for making political comments.

Thursday May 27 2021 02:33 pm

Duvar English

Turkish Nobel laureate novelist Orhan Pamuk said that Turkey is no longer a democracy, noting the recent highlight on the relationship between illegal organizations and the state in the country.

Mob boss Sedat Peker has been dominating the Turkish news cycle for almost a month now after releasing a series of YouTube videos where he revealed deep state schemes and connections between the government and organized crime organizations.

"Turkey isn't a democracy," Pamuk said. "They beat up people in the streets for making political comments, they break their fingers and the mafia gets involved."

Pamuk said that the only remnant of democracy in Turkey is the elections, but that any election that didn't yield the desired result was "stolen."

"There's no freedom of thought, separation of power or independency of courts in Turkey. We want freedom of thought before we can talk about the government's issues," Pamuk said.

The author said that his latest novel "Veba Geceleri" ("Nights of plague" in Turkish) is about society as a whole, but has been used as a tool to talk about the current government.

"People say 'We can't criticize the government, let's criticize Orhan Pamuk,'" the author said.