Since the failed coup attempt in Turkey, the country’s mainstream authors seem to have gotten a pass under the reign of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, The New York Times reports.

Authors have retained an “odd, if partial, immunity to the crackdown” so far, even though around 120 Turkish journalists have been jailed, along with hundreds of academics and thousands of teachers.

It’s unclear why Turkey has spared its literary figures—some believe that the book world’s status is a factor, while others wonder whether writers are more self-censoring than journalists.

But Turkey’s writers have not been altogether silent about current events. Orhan Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006, told the Times, “In the last three decades, novelists were not much in trouble for what they wrote in fiction.” He added that he has gotten trouble less for his novels than for his “interviews and random brief political essays.”

“Journalist political commentary is dangerous in Turkey, and after the failed coup, the situation of free speech got worse,” Pamuk said.

Despite the temporary comfort that a great many literary figures aren’t being jailed, there are still authors in jail, including novelist and human rights advocate Asli Erdogan (no relation to the Turkish president), though not for her novels, but her work with a Kurdish newspaper.

Related news: Egyptian novelist Ahmed Naji’s appeal against a two-year prison sentence for publishing a so-called “sexually explicit” article has been delayed, according to The Guardian.

Photo Credit: Ayman Oghanna/The New York Times.