Turkish President Erdogan slams Nobel Prize Committee for awarding a 'racist'

President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has slammed the Nobel Prize awarding committee on December 10, and accused the officials of honouring 'human rights violations'. While referring to the Nobel Laureate Peter Handke was awarded a prize in the literature on October 10 along with others and Erdogan called him a 'racist individual'. Handke has been widely criticised for backing the late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic. Erdogan also said that it is joining Albania and Kosovo in boycotting the Academy awards ceremony in order to protest its choice for awarding the Australian Author. 

Erdogan believes that giving a Nobel Prize to a 'racist' who denied the genocide in Bosnia and defends war crimes has no meaning on Human Rights Day. The Prime Minister of Albania took to Twitter on October 11 to condemn the writer and said it was a “disgraceful choice” which was made by the authorities. Furthermore, even the 76-year-old author was “astonished” to receive an award and said that he never thought that he would be chosen.  

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Widespread outrage over the award

Just after the award was announced by Nobel Prize Committee, people took on Twitter to express their anger, while some of them even said that “protests are coming.” The Muslim member from the joint presidency of Bosnia, Sefik Dzaferovic reportedly called the incident of Handke being awarded a Nobel Prize as 'scandalous' and 'shameful'. In a statement, he even accused the Swedish committee of neglecting the fact that the people who Handke was trying to protect have even been sentenced by the United Nations court for the most severe crimes including genocide. Dzaferovic further believes that by awarding Handke the Nobel Prize, the officials have also diverged from their moral compass. A Bosnian Actor, Nermic Tulic along with hundreds of others condemned the Swedish academy which praised Handke for writing powerfully about the catastrophe. 

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'Most influential'

However, on the contrary to the outrage, the Swedish academy dubbed Handke as one of the “most influential” writers in Europe and praised his work. However, the 76-year-old author had faced criticism for his strong defence of the Serbs during the wars of the 1990s. These wars were also responsible for the devastation of Balkans as Yugoslavia disintegrated and Handke even compared the Serbs to Jews under Nazis. Reportedly, he later retracted the comment. Handke called the former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, who died while facing trials of war crimes in 2006, a “rather tragic man” at his funeral.

He even wrote a travelogue, 'A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia' which caused an outrage in 1996. He also returned the Buechner prize in 1999 during the protest at bombing of Belgrade. Handke believed that it was very “courageous” of the award committee to make the decision of honouring him. He further added that they are “good people”. Handke wrote his first novel “The Hornets” in 1966. 

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(With inputs from agencies)