New York Times, NY
Aug. 12, 2006
Writers on Trial
By MAUREEN FREELY
Published: August 13, 2006
Elif Shafak is a Turkish novelist who has spent much of her life in
Europe and the United States. She fills her books with characters who
defy all orthodoxy, and in her journalism she lives by the same code,
mixing feminism and nuanced political analysis with a deep interest
in Ottoman culture. She has been much criticized by literary purists
for using words of Arabic and Persian origin that the reformers of
the early republic worked so hard to expunge, and for drawing on Sufi
traditions that continue to inform popular culture 80 years after
those same reformers banned Turkey’s dervish sects. She has a
particular genius for depicting backstreet Istanbul, where the myriad
cultures of the Ottoman Empire are still in tangled evidence on every
family tree.
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In her sixth and most recent novel, `The Bastard of Istanbul,’ which
is already a best seller in Turkey and will be published in the
United States by Viking next year, one character declares: `My father
is Barsam Tchakhmakhchian, my great-uncle is Dikran Stamboulian, his
father is Varvant Istanboluian, my name is Armanoush Tchakhmakhchian,
all my family tree has been Something Somethingian, and I am the
grandchild of genocide survivors who lost all their relatives in 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!’ These are strong words in a country whose official
historians maintain that the Armenian genocide at the hands of Turks
is itself a fiction. In February 2005, when Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s
most famous novelist, said in passing to a Swiss journalist that `a
million Armenians had been killed in these lands, and I am the only
one who talks about it,’ he was branded a traitor and prosecuted for
`denigrating Turkishness.’ Shafak must have known that she was
risking the same, as she has frequently challenged Turkey’s treatment
of its minorities. In September, she spoke at a conference at Bilgi
University in Istanbul – the first Turkish conference ever to
challenge the official line on the Ottoman Armenians – and though she
went on to state her own position clearly and unequivocally in
several newspapers, the censors left her alone. But early last month,
Shafak learned that she was to be prosecuted for, among other things,
allowing a character of partly Armenian heritage in `The Bastard of
Istanbul’ to utter the forbidden G-word. Her trial is scheduled for
Sept. 21.
Since its inception in 1923, the Turkish Republic has policed its
writers fiercely. Its penal code, taken from Mussolini’s Italy, puts
serious curbs on freedom of expression, but Turkey’s leading writers
have never toed the line. The great modernist poet Nazim Hikmet spent
much of his adult life in prison and died in exile. The novelist
Yashar Kemal, for many decades Turkey’s most famous writer, has been
serially harassed and prosecuted. During the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, so
many writers, journalists and scholars were imprisoned for their
views that a prosecution became a badge of honor: if you had not yet
angered the state, then perhaps you hadn’t said anything of
importance.
But 18 months ago, the rules of the game looked set to change. The
European Union had at last set a date for talks on Turkish accession.
The long conflict with Kurdish separatists was apparently over, and
the Kurds had been accorded limited cultural rights. Encouraged by
the prospect of entry into the European Union, other previously
silent Muslim and non-Muslim minorities were beginning to make
themselves heard. It was finally possible to tap the rich
multicultural Ottoman legacies that nationalist ideology had so long
repressed. There was a new vogue for family memoirs. Some showed how
peacefully the empire’s diverse `nations’ had once coexisted. Others
– like Fethiye Cetin’s `My Grandmother,’ in which the author recounts
her discovery that her grandmother was in fact Armenian – explored
suppressed histories. In Europe, a new generation of bicultural Turks
were mixing Turkish and Ottoman traditions with European forms and
winning prestigious prizes. As Pamuk’s star rose in the West, many
other Turkish novelists – Shafak, Latife Tekin, Asli Erdogan and
Perihan Magden – had their works translated. All were writing
sophisticated fiction that refused to conform to national – or
nationalist – modes.
In so doing, they seemed to be reflecting the mood of the country as
a whole. An overwhelming majority wanted to join the European Union.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the pro-market, pro-Europe Islamist prime
minister, had committed himself to a new penal code that promised to
bring Turkey into line with European norms. The hope was that the
European Union process would force the ossified machinery of state to
modernize.
What few people predicted was that the new penal code would become
the vehicle for backlash by expanding curbs on freedom of expression.
Article 301 recommends sentences of up to three years for those
convicted of `denigrating Turkishness’ or insulting the judiciary or
other state organs, while other articles make it an offense to insult
the memory of Ataturk or `seek to alienate people from military
service.’ A recently revised antiterror law is so broadly written
that it will, human rights groups claim, make it a crime to espouse
any view that is shared by an outlawed group or even to publish a
statement by an illegal organization.
To date, there have been more than 60 cases brought against
novelists, publishers, journalists, scholars, politicians and
cartoonists. Hrant Dink, the editor of the Turkish-Armenian weekly
Agos, currently has two cases against him open. The publisher Fatih
Tas is on trial for publishing a book (by the political scientist
John Tirman of M.I.T.) that takes a critical look at the Turkish
Army. Two eminent professors faced charges for saying, in a
never-published government-commissioned report, that Turkey’s
treatment of its minorities fell short of European standards, while
the magazine Penguen and one of its cartoonists were prosecuted for
portraying the prime minister as a kitten and an elephant, among
other animals.
So far, no one has been sent to prison. Some defendants have been
acquitted; others, like Pamuk, have seen their cases dropped on
technicalities, while many have been given suspended sentences that
were then converted to fines. But to assume that writers have nothing
to fear is to underestimate the forces behind these prosecutions.
It is still not clear how Article 301 found its way into the new
penal code, but the Unity of Jurists, an ultranationalist lawyers
group, is behind most of the high-profile prosecutions. Its main
spokesman is a lawyer named Kemal Kerincsiz. His rabidly xenophobic
sound bites have turned him into a national celebrity, and his words
are echoed by the thugs who have taunted, assaulted and insulted
defendants and observers in the corridors of the courthouses,
denouncing them as traitors and `missionary children’ (a reference to
the foreign schools many of the defendants attended) and spouting
racist slogans that call to mind Berlin in 1935, while the riot
police look on.
In certain corners of the state apparatus there must be others who
believe, like Kerincsiz, that `the European Union means slavery and a
prisoner’s chains for Turkey.’ They must be rejoicing that the trials
have seriously damaged the case for Europe inside Turkey, while also
giving fodder to anti-
Turkish nationalists in Europe. Most of all, they must be pleased
that the European Union has now signaled that the 301 trials are
serious impediments to accession.
This is not a tug of war between East and West as the West likes to
understand it: while some of Turkey’s new ultranationalists are
Islamists, most are old-guard, die-hard secularists. The battle is
about democracy, with supporters of European Union membership hoping
for peaceful change and opponents hoping for a return to
authoritarian rule.
How best to help the writers caught in the middle? Because Kerincsiz
and his colleagues have successfully labeled foreign trial observers
as spies and agitators, many in Turkey believe that non-Turkish human
rights groups should keep their mouths shut. But if the
ultranationalists are allowed to continue their campaign
unchallenged, they stand a very good chance of winning. And if they
do, the oldest stable secular state in the Muslim world will cease to
democratize, and a brave new literature will die.
Maureen Freely is the author of five novels and the translator of
Orhan Pamuk’s `Snow,’ `Istanbul’ and `The Black Book.’ She teaches
creative writing at the University of Warwick.