Pamuk himself was once tried for defaming "Turkness" because he said "a million Armenians and thirty thousand Kurds have been killed in this land" in the course of an interview he gave to a Swiss newspaper. Many of his detractors viciously linked the two developments. They argued that the prize was given to Pamuk not because of his literary accomplishments, his recognition as a master of the novel who transformed this literary form and raised substantive questions about East and West and their relations in his work but because of his political stance. The public in general was unable to rejoice in the accomplishment of one of its own.

This peculiar and rather unhealthy reaction is a reflection of the growing self-absorption of the public in Turkey and a growing mistrust of the West. Such a mood of xenophobic nationalism ill-suits Turkey's current trajectory and undermines its future projects. The deterioration of Turkey's relations with the West and the rise of an anti-Western orientation will harm Turkey's long-term interests. Beyond that such a development will exacerbate the West's legitimacy problems, further fuel anti-Western rage in the Middle East and beyond and seriously undermine pro-Western and/or secular forces in the region as well as assisting in Iran's ascent.