SOURCE: Stone, Norman. “Midnight Excess.” Spectator 282, no. 8899 (27 February 1999): 13-14.

In the following essay, Stone argues against Pinter's vocal public support for Kurdish nationalism in Turkey.

Trouble in Turkey? All aboard for Midnight Express. What damage that film has done. It is regularly shown on British television, and has impregnated the mind of a whole generation, to the point at which Turkey is permanently on the defensive—her police vilified, her courts regarded as kangaroo, even her children as rather on the fat side.

This is currently being reflected in the reporting of the Abdullah Ocalan affair. He will not get a fair trial and the police—large chaps with large moustaches—will beat him up in the dead of night in his island prison on the Sea of Marmara; will he even be buggered? (Midnight Express, passim). The Euro-Parliament will have its stalwarts—Pauline Green, as it happens...