The case of Turkish novelist Elif Shafak makes it hard to decide whether the glass that is Turkey is half-full or half-empty.
Ms. Shafak is the author of a best-selling novel titled "The Bastard of Istanbul." The book, set in the waning years of the Ottoman Empire, features an Armenian character who uses the term "genocide" to describe the Turkish deportations of 1915 in which almost a million Armenians died. Turkey denies there was a genocide, and its recently updated penal code makes use of that term, or others deemed critical of the government, a criminal offense.
Earlier this year, Ms. Shafak was charged under the code with "insulting Turkishness," punishable by up to three years in prison. The glass certainly looks half-empty when one considers that this was even possible, particularly in a country that casts itself as a modern, secular bastion of democracy with credible aspirations to join the European Union. Nor was Ms. Shafak alone. Her case followed a string of others, including the arrest last year, on the same charge, of Turkey's best-known writer, Orhan Pamuk.