Best-selling Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk may face another court case for allegedly insulting the Turkish military in an interview with a German newspaper, his publishers said on Monday.
Pamuk is already on trial under Article 301 of the revised penal code for telling a Swiss newspaper that no one dared discuss the alleged massacre of a million Armenians 90 years ago and the deaths of 30,000 Kurds in the past two decades.
The issue of freedom of speech has dogged every stage of Turkey's efforts to join the European Union. While the EU agreed to start entry talks with Turkey in October, such court cases are likely to hinder Ankara's progress towards full membership.
Nihat Tuna of publishers Iletisim Yayinlari said the prosecutor of an Istanbul court which charged Pamuk for denigrating Turkish identity had begun an investigation under the same article.
"This is a preliminary investigation. It does not mean that another case against Pamuk will be launched," Tuna told Reuters.
Daily Vatan said the nationalist Lawyers Unity Association called on prosecutors to charge Pamuk under Article 301, which punishes insulting Turkish identity, the army and parliament with up to three years in jail, in an interview with the daily Die Welt.
The 53-year-old author of best-sellers "My Name is Red" and "Snow" is seen by many as a Nobel Literature Prize contender. His novels deal with the clash between past and present and the values of East and West from the point of view of a bourgeois intellectual.
The same court has opened a case against an Armenian-Turkish journalist for his comments on a previous six-month sentence it gave him for denigrating Turkish identity.