*ISTANBUL: *Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday that ifhe was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize he would not accept it.
Erdogan’s remarks came after the awarding of the 2019 Nobel Prize inLiterature to Peter Handke, an Austrian writer who is accused of denyingthe 1995 Bosnian genocide.
Speaking at an event held on the occasion of Human Rights Day in thecapital Ankara, Erdogan said Turkey also would not participate in the Nobelceremony, saying “awarding such a killer amounts to complicity inoppression.”
The president described the Swedish Academy as a foundation which actspolitically and ideologically.
Handke is known to be a great admirer of former Serbian leader SlobodanMilosevic, who died in 2006 while facing trial in The Hague for war crimesand genocide.
“Stand up if you support the Serbs,” Handke wrote during the 1998-1999Kosovo War.
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He claimed that the Muslim Bosniaks in Sarajevo had killed themselves,adding that he never believed that the Serbs had committed genocide inSrebrenica.
Handke also visited Milosevic in prison and tried to testify in his favor.
“I am here for Yugoslavia, for Serbia, for Slobodan Milosevic,” Handke saidin 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. – Anadolu Agency
