Secular Democracy Goes on Trial

Secular Democracy Goes on Trial

By PANKAJ MISHRA
Published: December 16, 2005
But these familiar generalities - Enlightenment versus Religion, Democracy versus Fascism - have always been facile, and are now being exploded by the ordeal of another prominent writer of Muslim ancestry, Orhan Pamuk, who goes on trial in Turkey today.

Mr. Pamuk is accused of a committing a crime by mentioning, in an interview with a Swiss newspaper, that "a million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds" were killed in Turkey after World War I. The Armenian massacres are a widely documented fact. But it is an officially taboo subject in Turkey; and the government, nationalist political groups and press immediately joined in attacking Mr. Pamuk.
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It appears as though the secular countries like the US, Turkey, Russia and Germany have lied about their mass killings and let the religions take the blame.