Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Austrian writer Peter Handke, and said that this coronation is a reward for human rights violations, against the backdrop of criticism against Handke because of his support for the late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.
Handke today received the nine million crowns (935 thousand dollars) award, while hundreds participated in two protests in Stockholm, and Peter Englund, a member of the Swedish Academy that grants the Nobel Prizes, announced that he would not participate in the award ceremony for Handke, and said that his participation would be from " Hypocrisy. "
"Awarding the Nobel Prize for Literature to a racist man who denies genocide in Bosnia and defends war criminals on December 10, corresponding to Human Rights Day, would only make sense without awarding a prize for human rights violations," Erdogan said.
Turkey joined Albania, Kosovo and Croatia in boycotting the Nobel Prize ceremonies to protest against the selection of the academy of Handke, 77, for his support for Milosevic and his speech at the funeral of the late Serb leader in 2006 who died during his trial before the United Nations war crimes court.
Milosevic was accused of war crimes in connection with the atrocities and ethnic cleansing of Serb forces in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo during the wars of the 1990s, sparked by the breakup of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.