World-renowned Turkish writer and Nobel Prize recipient Orhan Pamuk informed that he feels more comfortable in today’s Turkey. 

“The campaign of the right-wing press against me continued until 2010, and I felt very uncomfortable, but now I'm much more relaxed. Perhaps it’s partly the Nobel Prize, but also the country has changed,” Pamuk told The Independent daily of Great Britain. 

According to the author of the article, however, even though Pamuk says things are easier, he is still escorted by a government-appointed bodyguard.

Pamuk believes that people uselessly see a diplomat in him and consider him as the voice of Turkey.

“It’s a burden. People look at me as sort of a diplomat for Turkey, which by nature, I’m not; I don’t want to be,” says Pamuk.

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.