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  • Another Turkish writer faces persecution

    ANOTHER TURKISH WRITER FACES PERSECUTION

    World War 4 Report, NY
    Aug 2 2006

    Submitted by Bill Weinberg on Wed, 08/02/2006 - 01:55.

    We have noted a growing number of Turkish writers to face prosecution
    for their words. The latest is, especially perversely, charged in
    connection with a work of fiction. From The Guardian, July 24:

    In Istanbul, a writer awaits her day in court

    Bestselling novelist Elif Shafak is the latest writer to face trial
    for "insulting Turkishness". She tells Richard Lea about her work,
    the charges that have been brought against her, and how the Turkish
    language has become a battleground.

    "Nobody was expecting this," says bestselling Turkish novelist
    Elif Shafak. A decision in Istanbul's seventh high criminal court
    earlier this month reopened her prosecution on charges of "insulting
    Turkishness". She faces a maximum jail term of three years if
    convicted.

    Shafak joins a roster of more than 60 writers and journalists to
    be charged under Article 301 of the Turkish criminal code since
    its introduction last year. University professors, journalists and
    novelists such as Perihan Magden, Orhan Pamuk and now Shafak have
    been charged under legislation drawn so broadly as to criminalise a
    wide range of critical opinions. Writers not only face the prospect
    of a three-year jail term, but the prosecutions also lay them open to
    a campaign of intimidation and harassment waged by rightwing agitators.

    "The protests are maybe even more unnerving than the actual trial,"
    Shafak told the Guardian today from her home in Istanbul. "Although
    their number is very limited they are very aggressive, very
    provocative." She describes crowds of protesters slapping and jostling
    defendants both inside and outside the courtroom, shouting and throwing
    coins and pens.

    The charges against Shafak open up new ground. She is not accused of
    "insulting Turkishness" because of her campaigning journalism or her
    academic work, but for remarks made by a fictional character in her
    latest novel, The Bastard of Istanbul.

    The novel, which was originally written in English, was published in
    a Turkish translation in March 2006 and quickly became a bestseller.
    The novel follows four generations of women, moving between Turkey and
    the US to tell the story of an Armenian family and the descendants
    of a son left behind during the deportations, who converts to Islam
    and lives as a Turk. It is perhaps the first Turkish novel to deal
    directly with the massacres, atrocities and deportations that decimated
    the country's Armenian population in the last years of Ottoman rule.

    Initial reactions to the book were mostly positive, and it went on
    to sell over 50,000 copies in less than four months. "I gave numerous
    readings, talks and book signings all over Turkey," explains Shafak.
    "Although the novel was difficult to digest for some people, in
    general the reception has been very positive."

    But in June a nationalist lawyer called Kemal Kerincsiz filed a
    complaint in Istanbul's Beyoglu district court against Shafak, her
    publisher, Semi Sokmen, and her translator, Asli Bican. Shafak and
    her publisher argued during interrogation that the book was a work
    of literature and that comments made by fictional characters could
    not be used to press charges against an author.

    "The interrogation went on for some time and eventually the prosecutor
    decided there was no element of insult and he dropped the case,"
    says Shafak. But her relief was short-lived. Earlier this month the
    same lawyer took the case to a higher court, and ultimately managed
    to have the decision overturned. She is now confronted with a long
    and daunting legal process. A trial, with all the unwelcome attention
    from rightwing groups which that entails, is now inevitable.

    It could not have come at a worse moment - she is six months
    pregnant. "From now on it is a long legal battle," she says. "The
    later stages of the pregnancy will probably coincide with the first
    stages of the trial."

    Peter Ayrton, founder of Serpent's Tail, a publisher deeply committed
    to literature in translation, was unsurprised by the news of Shafak's
    prosecution. "Most writers that are any good would get into trouble
    with the Turkish authorities," he explains. "She's a very acerbic
    voice. Her novels are lively, episodic and innovative. She's obviously
    a feminist, and her work is obviously rooted in contemporary social
    conditions in Turkey."

    Perhaps the time she spent abroad has given her a different perspective
    on Turkish life. She was born in Strasbourg, France in 1971 and spent
    her teenage years in Spain, before returning to Turkey to study social
    sciences. Four years ago she moved to the US, spending a year at the
    University of Michigan before her appointment as assistant professor
    at the University of Arizona. She now divides her time between the
    US and Turkey, where she has been touring the country to promote her
    new novel.

    Shafak herself believes the charges were brought for two reasons:
    "The overt reason is my latest novel and the critical tone of the
    book. The latent reason is deeper and more complex. I have been active
    and outspoken on various 'taboo' issues, critical of ultranationalism
    and all sorts of rigid ideologies, including those coming from the
    Kemalist elite, and I have maintained a public presence on minority
    rights, especially on the Armenian question. It is a whole package."

    Indeed, her fiction has always focused on social issues which Turks
    prefer to keep hidden, explains sociologist Muge Gocek, who translated
    the first of Shafak's novels to appear in the UK, The Flea Palace. "But
    she does so with humour, with grace, and without ever letting her
    characters lose their nobility of spirit," she adds.

    The way Shafak deals with Turkey's past is also unique, continues
    Gocek, "both in terms of her knowledge of religious heterodoxy as well
    as her use of Ottoman words - these elements add layers of depth to
    her novels."

    According to Shafak, language has been at the heart of the process of
    creating a new nation state, with words of Persian, Arabic or Sufi
    origin being purged from the language in an attempt to break away
    from the Ottoman past. "In the name of modernisation our language
    shrunk tremendously," she says.

    "As a writer who happens to be a woman and attached to Islamic, as well
    as Jewish and Christian heterodox mysticism, I reject the rationalised,
    disenchanted, centralised, Turkified modern language put in front
    of me," she declares. "Today in Turkey, language is polarised and
    politicised. Depending on the ideological camp you are attached to,
    for example Kemalists versus Islamists, you can use either an 'old'
    or a 'new' set of words."

    It is a choice she refuses to make, filling her writing with both "old"
    and "new" words. She says her fiction is like "walking on a pile of
    rubble left behind after a catastrophe. I walk slowly so that I can
    hear if there is still someone or something breathing underneath. I
    listen attentively to the sounds coming from below to see if anyone,
    any story or cultural legacy from the past, is still alive under the
    rubble. If and when I come across signs of life, I dig deep and pull
    it up, above the ground, shake its dust, and put it in my novels so
    that it can survive."

    Catheryn Kilgarriff, co-director of her British publisher Marion
    Boyars, was also drawn to her use of old Turkish language, as well
    as her use of allegory and fable. "She's an extraordinary writer,"
    she says, and an extremely exciting prospect for the future. "She's
    only 35 now and she's already mastered one or two different voices
    in her fiction. There's more to come."

    It's a body of work which is building her a formidable reputation
    overseas. "She's doing astoundingly well," adds Kilgarriff, pointing
    out that Shafak's books have been taken up by the large chains and
    offered in three for two promotions - unusual treatment indeed for
    literature in translation.

    Shafak has been published in Turkey, the US and Britain, though only
    two of her six novels are available in the UK at the moment. Since
    writing The Flea Palace, which was shortlisted for the Independent
    Foreign Fiction prize in 2005, she has begun writing in English -
    an act which has been seen by Turkish nationalists as a "cultural
    betrayal".

    It was a choice motivated more by her passion for language, by the
    search for new modes of expression. "There are certain things I'd
    rather write in English, certain others I'd rather write in Turkish,"
    she explains. "English, to me, is a more mathematical language, it
    is the language of precision. It embodies an amazing vocabulary and
    if you are looking for the 'precise word', it is right out there.
    Turkish, to me, is more sentimental, more emotional." English seems
    more suited for philosophy, analytical writing or humour, "but if I
    am writing on sorrow I'd rather use Turkish."

    This is something that nationalists fail to understand, she says. "It
    is always us versus them, this or that. Nationalists cannot understand
    that one can be multilingual, multicultural, cosmopolitan ... without
    feeling obliged to make a choice between them once and for all."

    It is perhaps this instinct which lies at the heart of the wider
    conflicts taking place in contemporary Turkish society. An increasingly
    urban Turkey has seen a broad cultural renaissance over the last three
    decades, which has been consistently under-reported in the west. Voices
    in literature, academia and the arts have begun to examine subjects
    which have long been taboo, to raise questions about uncomfortable
    issues such as the role of women or the history of Turkey's Armenian
    minority.

    But as this cultural resurgence has gained strength it has been met
    by a nationalist reaction.

    "On the one hand there are the ones who want Turkey to join the EU,
    democratise further and become an open society," says Shafak, but
    on the other "are the ones who want to keep Turkey as an insular,
    xenophobic, nationalistic, enclosed society. And precisely because
    things are changing in the opposite direction, the panic and backlash
    produced by the latter group is becoming more visible and audible."

    There are those who think that the prosecutions of leading writers
    under Article 301 are a sign that nothing is changing in Turkey, but
    Shafak thinks it is just the opposite: "Article 301 is being used
    more and more against critical minds precisely because things have
    been changing very rapidly in Turkey. The bigger and deeper the social
    transformation, the more visible the discomfort of those who want to
    preserve the status quo and the louder the backlash coming from them."

    It's a reaction which has already cast doubt on to Turkey's accession
    into the EU. Earlier this month the European commissioner in charge
    of negotiations with Turkey urged the Turkish authorities to amend
    Article 301, reminding them that freedom of expression "constitutes
    the core of democracy" and is a "key principle" in determining a
    state's eligibility to join the EU.

    It is too early to say what effect the trial will have on Shafak. She
    is determined that it will not influence her writing. "Next time I
    start a novel, I do not want to have qualms, fearing this or that
    topic might cause me yet another trouble," she says, adding that
    she is "much more daring" in her fiction than in her daily life:
    "While I am writing the urge to go on with the story outweighs any
    other concern that might cross my mind."

    A date for her trial has not yet been fixed. For the moment all she
    can do is wait.

    The Bastard of Istanbul will be published in the US by Viking/Penguin
    in 2007

    Elif Shafak's The Gaze was published in the UK earlier this month
    by Marion Boyars at £9.99

    http://ww4report.com/node/2276

    --Boun dary_(ID_+eZnzo6BRILg56xv10Vjpg)--
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