U.S.-based Turkish professor facing trial over controversial book

AP Worldstream; Jul 14, 2006

A University of Arizona assistant professor has been charged in Turkey
with "insulting Turkishness" and could face a prison sentence.

Elif Shafak, who is a Turkish citizen, said she will stand trial
because of the words uttered by fictional Armenian characters in
her novel "The Bastard of Istanbul" _ a book she wrote while she was
living in Tucson.

In the book, an Armenian character refers to "Turkish butchers."

The Turkish government and some international historians reject the
claim that a mass evacuation and related deaths of up to 1.5 million
Armenians living in Turkey from 1915 to 1923 was genocide. Turkey
also says the death toll is inflated.

Most Armenian and Western scholars say the massacres were genocide,
but Turkey has denied it, saying only that many Armenians died
of starvation, disease and exposure on forced marches to Syria in
retaliation against the Christian minority for reportedly collaborating
with Russia during World War I.

Shafak, 35, is on a one-year leave from her teaching post in the UA’s
department of Near Eastern studies.

She said her book was released in Turkey on March 8 and already has
sold more than 50,000 copies.

The charges against Shafak were filed under the controversial Article
301 of the Turkish Criminal Code.

The European Union has frequently warned Turkey that its efforts
to join the bloc could be hampered by Article 301, which sets out
penalties for insulting the Turkish Republic, its officials, or
"Turkishness," and has been used to bring charges against dozens of
journalists, publishers and scholars.

No trial date has been set yet, Shafak said. Her case has been reported
in the Turkish media but has not been confirmed by prosecutors or
court officials.

Shafak said her book "questions two big taboos, one of them a political
taboo _ the Armenian Question _ and the other a sexual taboo _
incest. So it was not easy to digest for some people and it caused
a lot of stir."