Elif Shafak acquitted of 'Insulting Turkishness'

my favourite author~Elif Şafak
Originally uploaded by quasileo.

Recently Elif Shafak was brought to trial for "Insulting Turkishness" in her book The Bastard of Istanbul (Bapa ve pik), under Turkey's Article 301. Like Orhan Pamuk, she has now been acquitted. Asli Bican, translator of the work to English, was also accused, but those charges were dropped.

More details here on the case here, with an interview with Shafak in the Guardian; the trial and almost immediate acquittal (Subscription only, in The Chronicle of Higher Education); here in Spanish from radical.es; and here in what looks like mostly French and Turkish you can follow the latest from various blogs.

Siné, a young woman living in Istanbul, says on her Myspace blog:

The foxy leaders who have realised for some time now that the most powerful and maybe the only useful tool to shake the dominant AKP rule is through using the nationalist card, are now in a constant battle to monopolise this dangerous ideology. Now that CHP and MHP are openly collaborating against AKP, it seems that we won't be seeing the light of day for a much longer time. Enjoy the darkness...

You see why I love blogs - you would not get this detailed analysis from most English language newspaper articles nor would you get the interesting personal perspective.

A tip for aspiring international news and blog-searchers: notice I got very different results on this breaking story by searching on "Shafak" vs. "Safak".

Thanks to Marilyn Hacker for the original link.