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16 Arrested in Plot to Kill Turkish Laureate

Posted Mar 21, 08 10:47 AM CDT in Arts & Living,  World 

(Newser) – A nationalist party leader, a veteran journalist, and a top academic have been arrested over a plan to kill dissident Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk. The leader of the Workers’ Party and former rector of Istanbul University, along with a general, and retired colonel, are among 16 who were detained over plans to kill the Nobel laureate and several senior Kurdish figures.

Pamuk has gained a reputation as a renegade for acknowledging the genocide of Armenians in the 1910’s and the current conflict with Kurds in the east of Turkey, AFP reports. The charges against the arrested men were not announced, but the assassination plot was described as ultra-nationalist and linked to security forces.

Source AFP

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Orhan Pamuk, Turkish writer and Nobel prize for literature laureate, smiles after he was awarded an honorary doctorate of the Free University of Berlin, Germany, Friday, May 4, 2007.   (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)
Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk during a news conference at the 60th International film festival in Cannes, southern France, on Wednesday, May 16, 2007.   (AP Photo/Lionel Cironneau)
Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk pauses before speaking during a news conference at the 60th International film festival in Cannes, southern France, on Wednesday, May 16, 2007.   (AP Photo/Lionel Cironneau)
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