Renowned Turkish writer and Nobel Prize recipient Orhan Pamuk received Denmark’s most prestigious prize in literature.

The Sonning Prize, which is worth one-million Danish kroner, was awarded to Pamuk in Copenhagen, Hurriyet daily of Turkey informs.

Representatives from Denmark’s Armenian community likewise were on hand at the ceremony, but Turkey’s Ambassador to Denmark was not in attendance. 

After the event, Orhan Pamuk did not respond to the Danish journalists’ questions concerning the Armenian Genocide.

In an interview with the Turkish DHA News Agency, however, Turkey’s Ambassador Berk Dibek noted that he was not invited to the award ceremony, but, had he been invited, he would have attended it with great delight.  

To note, in an interview with a Swiss newspaper in 2005, Orhan Pamuk had stated that the Turks had killed a million Armenians and 30 thousand Kurds in 1915. “And almost nobody dares to mention that. So I do,” Pamuk said. Subsequently, the Turkish authorities opened criminal proceedings against him under the Turkish Criminal Code’s infamous Article 301, that is, for explicitly insulting the Turkish identity. Separately, Pamuk received the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature.