A Turkish nationalist party leader, a veteran journalist and an academic have been arrested over an alleged plan to kill author Orhan Pamuk, the country's first Nobel laureate, media reported Friday. | Some people just can't stand success ... |
The news agency did not specify any charges against them but said they had been detained for their alleged role in an ultra-nationalist plot to kill Pamuk and senior Kurdish figures. Police also seized documents and software at a television station partly owned by Perincek's party, according to the IP news agency. Thirteen other people, including a general and a retired colonel, have been arrested over the supposed plot.
According to Turkish media reports, the suspects wanted to assassinate Pamuk, pro-Islamist journalist Fehmi Koru and Kurdish political figures Leyla Zana, Osman Baydemir and Ahmet Turk.
Despite his international fame, Pamuk's vocal criticism of issues that have long been national taboos has tagged him as renegade and a traitor, including the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, and the ongoing Kurdish conflict in the southeast. The media reports said the plans were allegedly hatched by an "ultra-nationalist" group thought to be linked to the security forces.