PROF’S TRIAL TO START 4 DAYS BEFORE BABY’S BIRTH IS DUE
Mike Cronin

AZ Central.com, AZ
Aug. 9, 2006

The trial for University of Arizona Professor Elif Shafak has been
scheduled for Sept. 21 in Istanbul, Turkey, just four days before
she is due to deliver her baby.

Shafak’s lawyer requested the trial be postponed because of her due
date, but the court refused.

However, Marly Rusoff, Shafak’s New York-based agent, is confident
the trial date ultimately will be moved. advertisement

Shafak, a native of Turkey, has been charged with "insulting
Turkishness" under the controversial Article 301 of that country’s
penal code. If found guilty, Shafak could serve up to three years
in prison.

The European Union has repeatedly warned Turkey that the existence
of the law could hinder its chance to become an EU member.

The charges arose after Shafak’s second novel written in English,
The Bastard of Istanbul, was translated into Turkish and published
in Turkey in March. It is already a bestseller there.

The book is set to be published in the United States by Viking in
early 2007.

Fictional characters in the book refer to "Turkish butchers." They
also talk about the genocide of Turkey’s Armenian population from
1915 to 1923. The Turkish government, like the U.S. government, does
not recognize the death of up to 1.5 million Armenians during that
time as genocide.

But the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the definitive
body of researchers who study genocide, has affirmed the historical
fact of the Armenian genocide. Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin, when
he coined the term genocide in 1944, cited the Turkish extermination
of the Armenians and the Nazi extermination of the Jews as defining
examples of what he meant.

9uaprof0809.html