Turkey Puts Novelist Shafak on Trial, Risking Breach With EU
By Ayla Jean Yackley
Bloomberg
Last Updated: September 20, 2006 19:29 EDT
Sept. 21 (Bloomberg) — Turkey will put novelist Elif Shafak on trial
today on charges she denigrated the national identity, in a case that
may trigger a showdown with the European Union over the government’s
failure to permit freedom of speech.
Shafak, 34, faces up to three years in prison if the Istanbul court
rules she "insulted Turkishness" in her best- selling novel, "The
Bastard of Istanbul."
The charges, under Article 301 of the country’s penal code, stem from
a passage in which one character, an ethnic Armenian, says "Turkish
butchers" massacred his ancestors in a 1915 "genocide."
The EU has repeatedly told Turkey that prosecuting writers for
expressing ideas isn’t acceptable and said the country’s year-old
membership talks may break down if Turkey fails to improve human
rights. Shafak’s case may show the European Commission, which is
drafting a report on Turkey’s progress toward membership, whether
those warnings are being heeded.
"The commission is following this case, and we’ll report on the
issue of freedom of expression" in an assessment due Nov. 8, said
Krisztina Nagy, a commission spokeswoman, in a telephone interview
today. Turkey must "amend Article 301 and other vaguely formulated
articles in order to guarantee expression," she said. The commission
is the EU’s executive branch.
A setback to membership talks with Turkey, which hopes to become the
EU’s first Muslim member, may inflame tensions between Europe and
the Islamic world, and hurt efforts by Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan to anchor Turkey in the West and lure investment to
its $360 billion economy.
`Isolated Entity’
"My case and others like it are an attempt to stop the EU process
by forces that want Turkey to remain an enclosed, isolated entity,"
Shafak said on Sept. 5 at a press briefing. "Anti-Islamic elements
in Europe also feed off of it."
Turkey, a country of 72 million people, has ignored the latest EU
calls for legal changes to defend free expression. The issue wasn’t
addressed in a package of EU-inspired reforms currently under debate
at an emergency session of Parliament, which cut short its summer
recess to pass the laws before the EU’s progress report comes out.
"It’s very regrettable the government has chosen not to revise or
abolish Article 301 at this time and a worrying sign it’s not committed
to the reform process," said Emma Sinclair- Webb, a researcher on
Turkey at Amnesty International in London.
The case against Shafak, the author of seven novels and an assistant
professor at the University of Arizona, "is in the realm of thought
crimes," Sinclair-Webb said. More than 40 writers, journalists,
publishers, academics and others have been prosecuted under Article
301, introduced in May 2005 and designed to meet EU standards, said
BiaNet, a press-advocacy group.
"The penetration of the domain of art and literature is the dimension
that worries me most," Shafak said.
"It’s peculiar to bring a novel into court, that a fictional character
is in the dock."
Armenians
Like Shafak, Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s best-known novelist whose books
have been translated into 34 languages, and Hrant Dink, an ethnic
Armenian journalist, have been prosecuted for their statements on
the massacre of Armenians during World War I. Pamuk was acquitted on
technical grounds in January, while Dink was convicted and given a
suspended six-month jail sentence in May.
Armenia says 1.5 million people were killed in a genocide by Ottoman
Turks beginning in 1915. The Turkish Republic, established in 1923
after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, says the killings were the
result of internecine fighting and not part of a centrally planned
campaign.
The government considers allegations of genocide acts of treason. So
does Kemal Kerincsiz, the head of a nationalist lawyers’ group that
filed the initial complaint against Shafak, as well as Pamuk and Dink.
"We believe it’s our responsibility to bring Elif Shafak and others
who curse our national values to justice," said Kerincsiz in a
telephone interview.
"We would be very pleased if this meant the EU didn’t take us."
Others say Erdogan’s government, which has achieved more progress
toward meeting EU standards than any of its predecessors, doesn’t
understand how crucial unfettered discourse is for the EU.
"Freedom of speech is the government’s blind spot," said Haluk Sahin,
a professor at Bilgi University and a Radikal newspaper writer in
Istanbul, in an interview. Sahin was acquitted in April of charges
brought under Article 301.
"It does not appreciate the seriousness of prosecuting people for
these so-called crimes in the democratic world and how damaging it
is to our EU prospects," Sahin said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul
at on [email protected]
Last Updated: September 20, 2006 19:29 EDT
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
