Midnight express
The Turks were right. The film Midnight Express wasn’t an accurate or fair portrayal of Turkey. If it were, the hash smuggler wouldn’t get thrown into a hellish prison, a novelist would. A few months back, it was Orhan Pamuk who avoided trial for charges that were brought about because he talked openly about the Armenian genocide in an interview. Now it’s Elif Shafak, a Turkish-born novelist now teaching at the University of Arizona. Her latest novel, published in Turkey as Father and Bastard, has raised the ire of lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz, described by BIAnet, a Turkish website that specializes in human rights coverage, as “a leading member of the right-wing organisation of lawyers who call themselves ‘The Unity of Jurists.’” The local prosecutor in Turkey had decided not to pursue charges of “publicly insulting Turkishness” against Shafak, her publisher, and her translator. But a court overturned that decision after Kerincsiz’s appeal. A trial date hasn’t been set yet.
Related links:
Click here for the story
Click here for Shafak’s website
