Novelist Shafaks Trial Stirs Controversy

Charges against Shafak are based on a criminal complaint made through a group of rightwing jurists who publicly dub themselves as the "Jurists Union" and have haunted the Turkish judicial system in the past year with complaints against leading intellectuals, writers and journalists.

Shafak's case will be heard at the Beyoglu 2nd Criminal Court of First Instance at 10.30 and both sides, Metis in support of freedoms and rights and Jurists Union claiming she is idolized in the interests of western imperialism, have called on supporters to turn up en mass at the Beyoglu Justice Hall.

Appeal for mass presence

Although Shafak herself will not attend the case due to giving birth to a daughter on September 16, Semih Sokmen will be at the hearing as the person responsible for publishing at Metis despite the court deciding twice in the past to dismiss proceedings against him.

Metis Publishing House has issued a public appeal for mass attendance to the hearing where Shafak faces a possible prison sentence of three years in a display of support that would show a desire for a country where "thought is not strangulated" and that those who want more democracy and more freedoms in Turkey are not marginal or a handful.

Union: "Time to say stop to enemies of Turkey!"

Raising concerns prior to the trial is a news report in the liberal Radikal newspaper saying that the group now identifying itself as the, "Grand Jurists Union" had issued a separate statement calling on everyone to fulfil a "National Duty" on the day of Shafak's trial.

The statement said "the time has come to say stop to the enemies of Turks on legitimate grounds. We invite everyone to the Beyoglu Justice Hall under the slogan 'invitation to national duty' to make the enemies of Turks pay in the field of justice for swearing at and insulting the Turkish nation".

References such as "making them pay" have raised concerns that tension will hit the case as in the examples of the previous trials of writers and journalists such as Orhan Pamuk, Hrant Dink, Perihan Magden, Murat Belge and Hasan Cemal where the so-called Jurists Union was involved.

The message by the Grand Jurists Union also said:

"Our country that has been kept under cultural and economic occupation by global forces for many years, is now face to face with the threat of military occupation and division under the framework of the Greater Middle East Project.

"Western imperialism, in its struggle to force the Sevres (Treaty) on Turkey again, has chosen to use Orhan Pamuk, Hrant Dink, Perihan Magden, Murat Belge, Hasan Cemal and those like them by idolizing them. The new princess selected by the ethnic minority supporters, the separatists, EU and USA followers, treaty intellectuals, is Elif Shafak."

Judicial proceedings

Jurists Union leading member Kemal Kerincsiz's first complaint against the book led to a dismissal of proceedings on June 7 after which he appealed to the High Criminal Court.

The 7th High Criminal Court then returned the previous decision asking the court to evaluate the offensive content of what had been written, reviving proceedings against Shafak, Sokmen and the book's translator Asli Bicen

After publisher Sokmen appealed on grounds that "a published cannot be subjected to trial for a work whose author could be identified" proceedings where dismissed against him and the translator. Beyoglu Public Prosecutor Mustafa Erol, charged only Shafak under article 301/1 in his July 24 dated indictment.

"Father and Bastard" who was published on 8 March this year is already on the bestseller list and the book is sold in Turkey. Originally written in English, the book is in the publishing schedule of Viking/Penguin publishing house.

Elif Safak, a Turkish citizen, was born in France and spent her childhood in Spain. After studying political science in Turkey, she held teaching positions in the United Kingdom, Turkey, and the United States and then took the position of Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Near Eastern Studies at University of Arizona.

Her publications include both novels and essays, among them The Saint of Incipient Insanities, which was her first book published in English, Bit Palas, Mahrem, which won the Turkish Writers' Association Best Novel of the Year Award, and Sehrin Aynalari. She has also published reviews in The Economist, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Globe, and The Washington Post.

(EO/KO/II/YE)