the trial of elif shafak

The trial of Turkish novelist and academic Elif Shafak (Şafak) is due to start next week, on the 21st--also the week she's due to give birth to her first child. There's been a small flurry of coverage in the past few days, but this NYT article and interview with Shafak, by Suzanne Fowler, is particularly strong (despite a misleading title). Fowler gives a good account of the political context of the EU accession process, nationalist backlash, and Article 301 issue, refers to Kemal Kerinçsiz ('round here known as nationalist asshat-in-chief) by name, and, bless her, draws attention to the ongoing persecution of Armenian-Turkish journalist & publisher Hrant Dink, who's been subjected to more of this legal harassment under Article 301 than anyone else. She also mentions the groundbreaking conference on the Armenian genocide held in Istanbul last fall--Shafak was a participant, and Kerinçsiz tried to get the courts to shut the conference down (my post/article about the conference is in the archives). The NYT piece is rich with observations from Shafak herself, particuarly on the oddity at the core of her case--the charge of "insulting Turkishness" is based on remarks by a fictional character in her latest novel:

“Article 301 has been used by ultranationalists as a weapon to silence political voices in Turkey,” Ms. Shafak said. “In that sense, my case is not unusual. But for the first time, they are trying to bring a novel into court. The way they are trying to penetrate the domain of art and literature is quite new, and quite disturbing.”

But they'll fail--Shafak and the rest of Turkey's writers will continue to keep the domain of art and literature flourishing in their country, and to use it as a space to challenge the narrow-hearted nationalism of their persecutors. In that, they're not insulting Turkishness: they're sustaining one its best traditions, that of Hikmet, writing from his cell in the Istanbul House of Detention in February 1939:

Memleketimi seviyorum:
Çınarlarında kolan vurdum, hapishanelerinde yattım.
Hiçbir şey gidermez iç sıkıntımı
memleketimin şarkıları ve tütünü gibi.

Memleketim:
Bedreddin, Sinan, Yunus Emre ve Sakarya,
kurşun kubbeler ve fabrika bacaları
benim o kendi kendinden bile gizleyerek
sarlık bıyıkları altından gülen halkımın eseridir.

Memleketim.
Memleketim ne kadar geniş:
dolaşmakla bitmez, tükenmez gibi geliyor insana
Edirne, İzmir, Ulukışla, Maraş, Trabzon, Erzurum
Erzurum yaylasını yalnız türkülerinden tanıyorum
ve güneye
pamuk işleyenlere gitmek için
Toroslardan bir kerre olsun geçemedim diye
utanıyorum.

Memleketim:
develer, tiren, Ford arabaları ve hasta eşekler,
kavak
söğüt
ve kırmızı toprak....

I love my country;
I've swung on its plane trees,
I've slept in its prisons.
Nothing lifts my spirits like its songs and tobacco.

My country:
Bedreddin, Sinan, Yunus Emre, and Sakarya,
lead domes and factory chimneys-
it's all the work of my people, whose drooping mustaches
hide their smiles
even from themselves.

My country:
so big
it seems endless.
Edirne, Izmir, Ulukishla, Marash, Trabzon, Erzurum.
All I know of the Erzurum plateau are its songs,
and I'm ashamed to say
I never crossed the Tauruses
to visit the cotton pickers
in the south.

My country:
camels, trains, Fords, and sick donkeys,
poplars,
willow trees,
and red earth....

(translation Mutlu Konak & Randy Blasing. The whole four-part poem in Turkish is here but I can't find a full English translation online, though here's a longer partial one. And another favorite Hikmet poem: Things I Didn't Know I Loved).