Orhan Pamuk Biography
Orhan Pamuk is a Turkish novelist, screenwriter, academic and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature. One of Turkey’s most prominent novelists, his work has sold over thirteen million books in sixty-three languages, making him the country’s best-selling writer.
Orhan Pamuk Age
Pamuk born Ferit Orhan Pamuk was born on 7 June 1952, Istanbul, Turkey. He is 67 years as of 2019.
Orhan Pamuk Education
Raised in a wealthy and Western-oriented family, Pamuk attended Robert College, an American school in Istanbul, and went on to study architecture at Istanbul Technical University. After three years he dropped out and devoted himself full-time to writing. In 1977 he graduated from the University of Istanbul with a degree in journalism. From 1985 to 1988 he lived in the United States and was a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York and the University of Iowa.
Orhan Pamuk Image
Orhan Pamuk Family
Pamuk’s elder brother Ševket Pamuk, who sometimes appears as a fictional character in the work of Orhan Pamuk, is an economics professor, internationally recognized for his work in the Ottoman Empire’s economics history, working at Istanbul’s Bogazici University. Pamuk also has a younger half-sister, a journalist, Hümeyra Pamuk.
Orhan Pamuk Marriage and Children
Pamuk married a historian, Aylin Türegün, on 1 March 1982. From 1985 to 1988, while his spouse was a graduate student at Columbia University, Pamuk took up the position of visiting scholar there, taking the time to perform studies and writing his novel The Black Book in the Butler Library of the university. This period also included a University of Iowa visiting fellowship. Pamuk returned to Istanbul, a heavily connected to the town. He and his wife had a daughter named Rüya (born in 1991), whose name in Turkish means “dream.” They’ve been divorced in 2001.
Pamuk returned to the U.S. in 2006 to take up a place as a visiting professor at Columbia, where he was a fellow with Columbia’s Global Thought Committee and kept an appointment at the Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures Department of Columbia and its School of the Arts. Pamuk returned to Columbia in the academic year 2007–2008 to teach comparative literature courses together with Andreas Huyssen and David Damrosch. Pamuk was also a Bard College writer-in-residence. Pamuk was Charles Eliot Norton Lecturer of Harvard in the autumn of 2009, giving a series of lectures entitled “The Naive and Sentimental Novelist.”
Orhan openly recognized his connection with Kiran Desai, an Indian-born booker prize winner. In January 2011, Turkish-Armenian artist Karolin Fişekçi informed Hürriyet Daily News that during the same moment (2010–12), Pamuk had a two-and-a-half-year partnership with her, a declaration that Pamuk explicitly denied.
Schama cites Pamuk’s wife Asli in an interview with Simon Schama released in the Financial Times on August 16, 2013. It is believed that Aslı Akyavaş is his present wife.
Orhan Pamuk Trial
After Pamuk made a declaration about the Armenian Genocide and mass murders of Kurds in 2005, a criminal case against the author was launched on the basis of a complaint lodged by ultra-nationalist lawyer Kemal Kerinçsiz. On January 22, 2006, the charges were dropped. His books were burned in a nationalist rally in Bilecik. Pamuk subsequently indicated that he intended to draw attention to problems relating to the liberty of expression. Nevertheless, Kemal Kerinçsiz, the lawyer who initially lodged charges against Pamuk, appealed to the Supreme Court of Appeal, which ordered the court to reopen the case in Sisli. Pamuk was discovered guilty on 27 March 2011 and ordered to pay a complete compensation of 6,000 liras to five individuals for, among others, having insulted their honor.
Orhan Pamuk Statements
The criminal charges against Pamuk led from comments he made with the Swiss newspaper Das Magazin during an interview on February 2005, a weekly supplement to a number of Swiss daily journals: the Tages-Anzeiger, the Basler Zeitung, the Berner Zeitung, and the Solothurner Tagblatt. In the interview, Pamuk said, “Thirty thousand Kurds have been murdered here, and one million Armenians have been murdered here. And almost no one dares to mention that.
Pamuk said he was subjected to a hate campaign as a consequence, forcing him to flee the nation. However, he came back later in 2005 to face the charges against him. He said in an interview with BBC News that he wished to protect liberty of expression, which was the only hope of Turkey to come to terms with its history: “What happened to the Ottoman Armenians in 1915 was a big thing concealed from the Turkish nation; it was a taboo, but we have to be prepared to speak about the past.” However, when Turkish television, CNN TURK questioned Pamuk about his speech, he confessed. He estimated the number of deaths (as 1 million) in that speech
Orhan Pamuk Prosecution
At the moment, Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code indicated: “An individual who openly insults the Republic or the Grand National Assembly of Turkey shall be punished by imprisonment for between six months and three years.” Pamuk was charged in the interview with breaking this law. Pamuk reiterated his opinions in a speech provided during an award ceremony in Germany in October after the prosecution had stated: “I repeat, I said loud and clear that one million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were murdered in Turkey.”
The old form of Article 301 before 2005 (and also the new form after the 2008 amendments) required the Ministry of Justice to approve the prosecution under the Article. A few minutes after the trial of Pamuk began on 16 December, the judge discovered that the consent had not yet been obtained and that the proceedings had been suspended. In an interview released on the same day in the Akşam journal, the then Minister of Justice Cemil Çiçek said that he had not yet received the file from Pamuk but would study it carefully once it had arrived.
Turkish state prosecutors dropped the charge on 29 December 2005 that Pamuk insulted the armed forces of Turkey, even though the charge of “insulting Turkishness” remained.
Orhan Pamuk International Reaction
The charges against Pamuk triggered a global outcry, leading to issues about the suggested entry of Turkey into the European Union in some circles. The European Parliament announced on 30 November that it would send to observe the trial a delegation of five MEPs led by Camiel Eurlings. EU Commissioner for Enlargement Olli Rehn subsequently said that the Pamuk case would be a “litmus test” of Turkey’s engagement to EU membership criteria.
Amnesty International issued a statement on 1 December calling for the repeal of Article 301 and for the release of Pamuk and six others awaiting trial under the act. The PEN American Center also denounced the accusations against Pamuk, saying: “PEN considers it extraordinary that a State which has signed both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of the United Nations and the European Convention on Human Rights, both of which regard liberty of speech as key, should have a penal code containing a clause which is so obviously contrary to the same.
On December 13, eight world-renowned authors— José Saramago, Gabriel García Márquez, Günter Grass, Umberto Eco, Carlos Fuentes, Juan Goytisolo, John Updike, and Mario Vargas Llosa — issued a joint declaration promoting Pamuk and denouncing the charges against him as a human rights breach.
In 2008, Prospect Magazine (United Kingdom) and Foreign Policy (United States) elected Pamuk as the fourth most intelligent individual in the globe in an open online poll.
Orhan Pamuk Charges Dropped
On 22 January 2006, the Turkish Ministry of Justice refused to issue the prosecution’s permission, stating they had no power under the new penal code to open a case against Pamuk. With the local court trial, the next day it was ruled that the case could not continue without the approval of the Ministry of Justice. Subsequently, Pamuk’s lawyer, Haluk, verified that charges had been dropped.
The announcement took place in a week when a review of the Turkish justice system was planned for the EU.
Orhan Pamuk Nobel Prize
On 12 October 2006, the Swedish Academy reported that he had been granted the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, perplexing savants and oddsmakers who had inferred that Syrian writer Ali Ahmad Said, known as Adunis, was destined to get that year’s honor. There were worries inside Turkey that the choice to grant the Nobel Prize to Pamuk was politically propelled. In its reference, the Academy stated: “In the journey for the melancholic soul of his local city, [Pamuk] has found new images for the conflict and joining of societies.”
Pamuk held his Nobel Lecture on 7 December 2006 at the Swedish Academy, Stockholm. The talk was entitled “Babamın Bavulu” (“My Father’s Suitcase”) and was given in Turkish. In the talk, he symbolically discussed relations among Eastern and Western developments utilizing the topic of his association with his dad.
Pamuk’s books bankrupt a record and sold more than 200,000 duplicates after the declaration of his prosperity, prompting him turning into Sweden’s top of the line beneficiary of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Orhan Pamuk Other Awards and Honors
- 1979 Milliyet Press Novel Contest Award (Turkey) for his novel Karanlık ve Işık (co-winner)
- 1983 Orhan Kemal Novel Prize (Turkey) for his novel Cevdet Bey ve Oğulları
- 1984 Madarali Novel Prize (Turkey) for his novel Sessiz Ev
- 1990 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (United Kingdom) for his novel Beyaz Kale
- 1991 Prix de la Découverte Européenne (France) for the French edition of Sessiz Ev : La Maison de Silence
- 1991 Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival (Turkey) Best Original Screenplay Gizli Yüz
- 1995 Prix France Culture (France) for his novel Kara Kitap: Le Livre Noir
- 2002 Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger (France) for his novel My Name Is Red: Mon Nom est Rouge
- 2002 Premio Grinzane Cavour (Italy) for his novel My Name Is Red
- 2003 International Dublin Literary Award (Ireland) for his novel My Name Is Red (awarded jointly with translator Erdağ M. Göknar)
- 2005 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (Germany)
- 2005 Prix Médicis étranger (France) for his novel Snow: La Neige
- 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature (Sweden)
- 2006 Washington University’s Distinguished Humanist Award (United States)
- 2006 Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France)
- 2008 Ovidius Prize (Romania)
- 2010 Norman Mailer Prize, Lifetime Achievement (USA)
- 2012 Sonning Prize (Denmark)
- 2012 Légion d’honneur Officier (France)
- 2014 The Mary Lynn Kotz Award (USA) for his book “The Innocence of Objects”
- 2014 Tabernakul Prize (Macedonia)
- 2014 European Museum of the Year Award (Estonia)
- 2014 Helena Vaz da Silva European Award for Public Awareness on Cultural Heritage (Portugal)
- 2015 Erdal Öz Prize (Turkey), for his novel A Strangeness in My Mind
- 2015 Aydın Doğan Foundation Award (Turkey), for his novel A Strangeness in My Mind
- 2016 The Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award (“Foreign Literature” category, Russia) for his novel A Strangeness In My Mind
- 2016 Milovan Vidaković Prize in Novi Sad (Serbia)
- 2017 Budapest Grand Prize (Hungary)
Orhan Pamuk Doctorates, Honoris Causa
- The 2007 Free University of Berlin, Department of Philosophy and Humanities – 4 May 2007
- 2007 Tilburg University – 15 November 2007
- 2007 Boğaziçi University, Department of Turkish Language and Literature – 14 May 2007
- 2007 Georgetown University’s Honorary Degree: Doctor of Humane Letters honoris causa
- 2007 Complutense University of Madrid
- 2008 University of Florence
- 2008 American University of Beirut
- 2009 University of Rouen
- 2010 University of Tirana
- 2010 Yale University
- 2011 Sofia University
- 2017 Brera Academy (Italia)
- 2017 St. Petersburg State University
Orhan Pamuk Net Worth
He has an estimated net worth of $1 Million
Orhan Pamuk Twitter
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