NEW NOVEL SPARKS TRIAL IN TURKEY

Edmonton Sun, Canada
Sept 10 2006

ISTANBUL, Turkey — Elif Shafak, one of Turkey’s leading authors,
is about to have a baby – and go on trial.

The reason for this strange conjunction of joy and foreboding
is her new novel, which has exposed her to a charge of "insulting
Turkishness" because it touches on one of the most disputed episodes
of her country’s history – the massacres of Armenians during the
final years of the Ottoman Empire.

A University of Arizona literature professor, the 35-year-old Shafak
divides her time between Tucson and Istanbul. She sought a postponement
of her trial, set for Sept. 21, until after her first child is born.

COULD GET THREE YEARS

She could get three years in prison, though similar trials of other
Turkish writers have usually folded on technicalities and no one has
gone to jail.

For now, she’s reflecting on the peculiarities of being tried for
the words she gave to an Armenian voice in the novel.

"I think my case is very bizarre because for the first time they are
trying fictional characters," Shafak told The Associated Press.

The case has broad ramifications, highlighting a rising wave of
Turkish nationalism and the whole question of whether Turkey, a Western
ally and NATO member, should be admitted to the liberal, democratic
European Union – something the Bush administration supports. Turks
who long for EU membership worry that trials of writers are setting
back their cause.

But nationalists such as Kemal Kerincsiz, one of the lawyers suing
Shafak, say Turkey shouldn’t have to forsake bedrock convictions –
for instance, that there was never any Armenian genocide – just to
please Europe.

Shafak said the law on insulting Turkishness "has been used as a
weapon to silence many people. … My case is perhaps just another
step in this long chain."

That chain includes Turkey’s best known novelist, Orhan Pamuk, and
dozens of other writers forced to defend themselves against charges of
"insulting Turkishness."

NOVEL DEALS WITH TABOOS

The novel in question, The Bastard of Istanbul, deals with taboos –
domestic violence and incestuous rape – that are rarely discussed
in Turkey.

But it is what her Armenian-American characters say that has landed
Shafak in court. For instance, this from a man worried about his
niece being brought up by a Turkish stepfather:

"What will that innocent lamb tell her friends when she grows up? …

(That) I am the grandchild of genocide survivors who lost all their
relatives to the hands of Turkish butchers in 1915, but I myself have
been brainwashed to deny the genocide because I was raised by some
Turk named Mustapha!"

Turkey insists the deaths of up to 1.5 million Armenians during forced
evacuations in the First World War was not a planned genocide but
the result of the bloody breakup of the Ottoman Empire.