Orhan Pamuk calls on Bashar al-Assad to resign

ISTANBUL

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Turkish Nobel laureate author Orhan Pamuk and five other renowned authors have written a strong letter to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to demand an end to the ongoing violence in the country.

Pamuk, Alfred Grosser, David Grossman, Claudio Magris, Boualem Sansal and Martin Walser demanded that al-Assad stop receiving help from states like China and Russia and advised him abandon power and leave the country. If not, he could end up dead like Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, they said in the letter dated Dec. 7.

"Announce your resignation and call the parties to negotiate a transition toward free elections under the auspices of the U.N. Negotiate your departure, with your family, as the cunning [ex Yemeni President Ali Abdullah] Saleh managed to do. Apart from this solution, there is but one for you, though unfortunate for your family: death like Saddam Hussein or Gadhafi. Or life in prison in a sanitized cell in The Hague."