NOVELIST ON TRIAL FOR THE ‘CRIMES’ OF HER CHARACTERS
by Suna Erdem
The Times (London)
September 19, 2006, Tuesday
Elif Shafak is the latest writer to be charged with "insulting
Turkishness". They want to control art, she tells Suna Erdem.
UNCLE DIKRAN, Grandma Shushan and Auntie Zeliha may be figments of
the novelist Elif Shafak’s imagination but they will all be in the
dock this week in a bizarre trial that has become a test for Turkey’s
European ambitions and commitment to freedom of speech.
Mrs Shafak, 34, has been charged under Article 301 of the penal code
with "insulting Turkishness" through the fictional dialogue in her
bestselling novel The Bastard of Istanbul, about the intertwined
history of a Turkish and an Armenian-American family.
The European Union, with which Turkey began accession talks last
year, has been a strong critic of the law and is expected to condemn
curbs on freedom of expression in a report on October 24. Turkey’s
parliament is holding an emergency meeting this week on further
EU-related legal reform, but the Government has so far failed to
act on Article 301 -which was also used to put Orhan Pamuk, the
country’s most famous novelist, on trial -pointing out that cases
end in acquittal anyway. That is not the point, Mrs Shafak says.
"I think the biggest worry regarding Article 301 is not that it puts
people in prison but it silences them." Even the briefest of Article
301 court cases has proved a platform for harassment of top writers
but for Mrs Shafak it is even worse. She gave birth to a baby girl
last Saturday and, since the court refused her request for the hearing
to be postponed, she must now either excuse herself through a medical
report or leave a five-day-old baby to go to court on Thursday.
Charging fictional characters "is a new step", Mrs Shafak said. "It
means they are now trying to control art, and this is very alarming
because in Turkey -a country that witnessed three military takeovers
-art and literature had always been autonomous."
The crime committed by her characters is to refer to the taboo subject
of mass Armenian killings in Ottoman Turkey in 1915. The Armenians
call it genocide, Turks say large-scale wartime deaths. The fictional
Uncle Dikran speaks of "Turkish butchers", others talk about being
"slaughtered like sheep" and claim all Turks are either nationalist
or ignorant. More absurdly, some Turkish characters are charged over
routine gripes about the country.
The accusations demonstrate a wilful misreading of the book, in which
the families are so mixed up that it is hard to take sides. Mrs Shafak,
describing how many contemporary Turks are descended from minorities
in a multicultural Ottoman Empire, is critical both of Turks’ amnesia
regarding events before the country became a republic in 1923 and of
the Armenian diaspora’s apparent obsession with history.
This trial is not just about her book, she says. The case is part
of a political effort by extreme nationalists to hamper Turkey’s EU
aspiration by demonstrating how un-European it is.
As Turkey has undergone almost unprecedented reform over the past few
years, including a curbing of the powers of the military, it has also
witnessed rising nationalism. It is surely no coincidence, Mrs Shafak
says, that early next month Ipek Calislar, a respected journalist,
will go on trial for "insulting Ataturk", Turkey’s revered founder,
in a book that shared the bestseller spot with The Bastard of Istanbul.
"We are seeing a clash between those who wholeheartedly support the EU
process, and others who want to turn this society into a xenophobic,
isolationist country," she said.
Kemal Kerincsiz, the lawyer who brought the case against Mrs Shafak,
is behind several other such cases. He insists that EU membership
would be a disaster for Turkey, and has claimed that it was not Mrs
Shafak but some shady imperialists who penned her novel as part of
a plot to destroy Turkey.
Mrs Shafak says that many Turkish officials are embarrassed about the
present situation. She does not believe that she will go to jail and
is certain that Article 301 will be reformed. But that does not mean
that Mr Kerincsiz is harmless. Nor does this exonerate the political
elite, which is responsible for creating an environment in which he
can operate.
THE ARMENIAN QUESTION
* Turkey has long refused to call the events of 1915 to 1917 a
genocide. It maintains that the Armenians died in the context of
the First World War and that the State had no role in planning mass
extermination
* Turkey condemned efforts last week by the Cordoban regional
government in Argentina to instate April 24 as a day to commemorate the
Armenian genocide of 1915, reaffirming its insistence that allegations
of a so-called genocide were baseless
* Established a year ago, Article 301 makes it illegal to publish
material that "denigrates Turkishness" and the institutions of the
State -the Government, the judiciary, the military or the state
security apparatus. Under the law, doing so from outside Turkey is
sanctioned more severely, increasing one’s jail sentence by a third
* About 60 publishers, journalists and writers are being prosecuted
currently under the law, which has raised considerable controversy
as Turkey negotiates membership of the European Union