As I said, Im very happy now. I have no desire to play the hero, says Ka, Orhan Pamuks embattled poet protagonist in the lauded Turkish novelists latest and most political work, Snow. Ka goes on, Heroic dreams are the consolation of the unhappy.

Trapped in the remote eastern Turkish city of Kars when, preempting elections, a kind of military coup overtakes the city during a blizzard, Ka is forced to play diplomat between the citys mutually hostile political factions and the leaders of the coup. An outsider from Istanbul who lived in exile for years, no one except his lover Ipek trusts the big-city intellectual. Although Kars and Ipek are inspirational for Ka as he dashes off poems more prolifically then ever before, he is politically disillusioned and hopes only to get out of this city in one piece so he can live abroad with his lover. It seems Pamuk himself has been denied the quiet joy of his protagonist, and many in Turkey disdain the novelist precisely for having too heroic of dreams.Earlier this year, under pressure from the EU, Turkey finally halted the prosecution of Pamuk for comments he made in an interview with a Swiss magazine in 2005. The interview touched a nerve with Turkish nationalists who reacted to Pamuks statement that Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it. The genocide of Armenians during the waning years of the Ottoman Empire is officially denied by Turkey, and the states war against Kurdish separatists in eastern Turkey has been particularly brutal. Nationalist extremists hope prosecution of the few who speak out about Turkeys history of human rights failures will frighten others from such daring.

Although Pamuks case was thrown out of court, for him and other dissidents in Turkey the drama is far from over. Last week a group of six nationalists filed a civil suit against Pamuk over his comments and, in an unrelated case, the state went forward with the prosecution of a journalist charged with insulting Turkeys courts after he editorialized against a courts attempt to shut down an academic conference in Istanbul about the Armenian genocide. Human rights groups have consistently called for Turkey to reform.

Pamuk is a strong advocate for Turkeys ascendance to the EU, but both his writings and his criticism of his countrys politics have become ammunition for the two groups most opposed to this process: anti-European Turks and anti-Turk Europeans. Although he claims things have changed significantly in Turkey since the events in Snow, which takes place in the 90s, Pamuks portrait of a Turkey with an excessively powerful military, considerable factionalism, and many deeply religious Muslims scares Islamophobic Europeans already worried about their own Muslim minorities whom they seem incapable of integrating.

Compounding this problem, Turkeys secular guardians attempted prosecuting Pamuk in contravention of Europes most sacred principle: freedom of speech. The recent renewal of violence in the Southeast sadly puts even Pamuks claims of progress in question.

On the other hand, some Turks wary of losing their identity in the process of European integration see Pamuk as the epitome of godless European decadence, a man who dares to insult his roots and criticize his culture. On his way into court in January, Pamuk was pelted with eggs by angry protesters who shouted Traitor!

The writer himself embodies the two souls he says will coexist in the future Europe. As Pamuk says in an interview from 2004, To have democracy is precisely to have this dialogue between these two souls. In other words, Europes pretentions towards openness and tolerance are useless without genuine pluralism.

But it is clear that not everyone in Europe or Turkey for that matter is comfortable being haunted by an extra soul. Europes failures at integration of minorities were highlighted last fall when France was forced to declare a state of emergency after poor, mostly Muslim youth torched cars and rioted in defiance of the French state and even their own Muslim community leaders for two straight weeks. European culture creates a climate in which a French citizen who is decended from Middle Eastern or African immigrants may never be allowed to feel herself quite French. Promoting a cultural dynamism sometimes lacking in Europe, Pamuk believes that for Europe to be strong, it must reinvent itself... based not on religion and a fairytale history, but a tolerant anti-nationalist vision.

Pamuks criticism is, of course, not limited to Europe. According to him, Turkey must not simply reform, but change radically. A fragile democracy that forms a geographic and cultural bridge between Europe and the Middle East, Turkey has long been living with two souls or more.

Snow is an attempt to deal with these competing Turkish identities by giving rational voice to Turkeys sometimes-irrational reactionary factions. In the book, Kemalists, Islamists, Kurdish nationalists, and burnt-out Marxists all compete to advance agendas and save face in a convoluted political milieu that is not so much humane as simply human. During a meeting of the citizens of Kars who are determined to show solidarity against the coup by publishing a statement in a European newspaper, a middle-aged businessman states his goal as proving to the Europeans that in Turkey, too, we have people who believe in common sense and democracy. A young Islamist immediately shoots back: If a big German paper have me two lines of space, this would not be the first thing Id be aiming to prove. The tension between these souls is Snows most enduring theme.

In a 21st century plagued by culture wars, identity politics, and downright bigotry, seeing the proverbial other as human and worthy continues to be humanitys greatest task. Some thinkers capitalize on the divisions within humanity and sell books that threaten to turn The Clash of Civilizations into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Others weave stories that humanize those whom it is easy to dismiss as irrational or brutish, while exposing the insanity and brutality in ourselves.

Orhan Pamuk is, in fact, precisely the kind of public intellectual Turkey and every society is hopeless without. Bold but not reckless, self-critical but unmistakably Turkish, the novelist has succeeded in initiating a dialogue among the Turkish people over long-taboo topics. Some in the Turkish press have caricatured Pamuk into some kind of ambitious, self-hating Turk or pawn of the terrorists who cavalierly smears his motherland to sell more books and ingratiate himself with the Europeans. Although sadly many Turks, even those who praise his writing, believe this garbage, Turkey will never become an open society until people like Pamuk can successfully stand up to persecution by the state and death-threats from the public. Only then, in a climate of openness and respect, can Turkey hope to manage its deepest problems.

Orhan Pamuk will give the keynote address at this weeks Puterbaugh Conference on World Literature, sponsored by World Literature Today, the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures & Linguistics, and the Department of English. For more information about the event, call 405.325.4531.

Adam Tyner is an International and Area Studies senior currently studying abroad at Boazii University in Istanbul, Turkey.

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