Turkish presidential spokesperson urges revoke of Nobel Prize for Handke

ANKARA-Anadolu Agency

Turkey’s presidential spokesman on Dec. 7 called on the Swedish Academy to revert its decision to award Peter Handke with the Nobel Prize for Literature, dubbing it a “shameless decision”.

“On Monday [Dec. 9] Nobel Prize will give the Prize for Literature to Peter Handke who supports Milosevic and denies the Bosnian genocide. This shameless decision must be reverted,” İbrahim Kalın said on Twitter.

The Austrian playwright, novelist and poet Handke was awarded the 2019 prize in early October "for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience," according to the statement by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm.

Kalın warned that the prize would serve to encourage new genocides, and asked: “How can you award someone without moral consciousness and sense of shame?!”

Following the announcement of Handke the prize winner, relatives of Bosnian War victims also condemned the decision.

Handke is known as a great admirer of former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, who died in 2006 at the international tribunal in The Hague on trial for war crimes and genocide.

"Stand up if you support the Serbs," Handke said in an article he published during the war in Kosovo.

He claimed that the Muslim Bosniaks in Sarajevo killed themselves and put the blame on the Serbs, and added that he never believed the Serbs committed genocide in Srebrenica.

Also, Handke visited former Serbian leader Milosevic in prison and made attempts to testify in his favor.

"I am here for Yugoslavia, for Serbia, for Slobodan Milosevic," Handke said, attending Milosevic's funeral in 2006.

Handke will also receive 9 million Swedish kronor ($952,000), as well as a medal and a diploma.