UA prof faces Turkish trial for novel
Arizona Republic, AZ
July 15 2006
Mike Cronin
The Arizona Republic
Jul. 15, 2006 12:00 AM
Marly Rusoff, a New York-based literary agent, says it’s like writing
about the Holocaust in Germany and being jailed for "insulting
Germanness."
But in Turkey, it’s the law.
Elif Shafak, a University of Arizona assistant professor of Near
Eastern studies whom Rusoff represents, has been charged with
"insulting Turkishness" under Turkey’s Article 301 of the Turkish
Criminal Code. If convicted, the author could go to prison.
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Shafak’s novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, deals, in part, with the
conflict between the Turks and Armenians that began in 1915. A mass
evacuation that lasted until 1923 resulted in up to 1.5 million
Armenian deaths. Most American and Western scholars categorize those
deaths as genocide, saying the Turks massacred the Armenians.
In Shafak’s novel, one of the characters refers to "Turkish butchers."
The Turkish government and some international historians, however,
reject the genocide claim.
Turkey maintains that many Armenians died of starvation, disease and
exposure on forced marches to Syria. Those marches were in retaliation
against the Christian minority for reportedly collaborating with
Russia during World War I. Turkey also says the death toll is inflated.
Although Shafak’s case has been reported in the Turkish media,
prosecutors and court officials there have not confirmed it.
Shafak, 35, on leave from UA, is not incarcerated. A trial date has
not been set, the author told the Arizona Daily Star.
"No Turkish writer has ever written about the Armenian genocide,"
Rusoff said. "She (Shafak) wrote about it (while living in Tucson).
It was translated into Turkish. It was published there first in March
and became a bestseller. That’s when trouble started."
Shafak’s first novel, written in English, The Saint of Incipient
Insanities, was published by Farrar Straus & Giroux in 2004.
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." It has been used to bring charges against dozens of
journalists, publishers and scholars.
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."