Awarding Nobel to Handke encourages Islam's enemies

By Jeyhun Aliyev and Sibel Morrow

ANKARA (AA) - Awarding the Nobel Prize to Peter Handke will only encourage “enemies of Islam and humanity”, the Turkish president said on Tuesday.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s remarks came at a commemoration event at the presidential complex in the capital Ankara to mark the 75th year of Ahiska Turks' exile.

"It is a shame and disgrace to award a person who defends and praises a murderer who shed the blood of tens of thousands of Muslims," Erdogan said, referring to the 2019 Nobel Laureate in Literature Peter Handke, an Austrian writer who is accused of denying the 1995 Bosnian genocide.

Handke is known to be a great admirer of former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, who died in 2006 while facing trial in The Hague for war crimes and genocide.

"Stand up if you support the Serbs," Handke wrote during the 1998-1999 Kosovo War.

He claimed that the Muslim Bosniaks in Sarajevo had killed themselves, adding that he never believed that the Serbs had committed genocide in Srebrenica.

Handke also visited Milosevic in prison and tried to testify in his favor.

"I am here for Yugoslavia, for Serbia, for Slobodan Milosevic," Handke said in a 2006 eulogy for Milosevic.

In winning the prize, Handke will also receive 9 million Swedish kronor ($952,000) as well as a medal and a diploma.