BBC News
Thursday, 21 September 2006,

Top novelist acquitted in Turkey

Elif Shafak hoped her novel would encourage empathy
A court in Istanbul has acquitted the best-selling
Turkish novelist, Elif Shafak, who had been accused of
insulting "Turkishness".
Ms Shafak, 35, had faced charges for comments made by
her characters on the mass killings of Armenians in
the final years of the Ottoman Empire in 1915.

Turkey rejects Armenia’s claim that the killings
constituted "genocide".

The EU has been urging Turkey to abolish a
controversial law that makes it a crime to insult the
Turkish state.

The trial was seen by the EU as a test of freedom of
expression in Turkey, which began membership talks
with the 25-member bloc last October.

Scuffles

The proceedings lasted just 40 minutes and ended in
utter chaos, the BBC’s Sarah Rainsford reports.

The judges said they based their decision on lack of
evidence to prove that Ms Shafak "denigrated the
Turkish national identity" in her novel, The Bastard
of Istanbul.

If Article 301 will be interpreted in this way
nobody can write novels in Turkey anymore, no-one can
make movies any more

Elif Shafak

Ms Shafak – who has recently given birth to her first
child – was not present at the hearing.

The nationalist lawyers who brought the case under
Article 301 of Turkey’s penal code walked out in anger
shortly after the trial opened.

They claimed the court and judges had been unduly
influenced by the EU.

Riot police moved in to stop scuffles between
nationalists and leftists outside the courthouse.

‘Autonomy of art’

One of the lawyers who filed the complaint against Ms
Shafak had claimed that her novel was Armenian
propaganda, dripping with hatred for the Turks.

One of the novel’s characters speaks of "Turkish
butchers" and a "genocide", while others talk about
being "slaughtered like sheep".

Ms Shafak was the latest in a long line of writers to
face similar charges in Turkey. But this was the first
time Article 301 had been used against a work of
fiction.

"If Article 301 will be interpreted in this way nobody
can write novels in Turkey anymore, no-one can make
movies any more," Ms Shafak told the BBC before the
trial.

"The words of a character could be used as evidence
against the author or the film director. I think it is
extremely important to defend the autonomy of art, and
of literature," she said.