A novelist in trouble

Clearly, something is up with Turkish prosecutors and the concept of free speech. If you scroll down, you'll find an earlier item about charges filed against MIT professor Noam Chomsky's publisher. Now, after a push by conservative prosecutors, an Istanbul court has reinstated charges against novelist Elif Shafak, accusing her of "insulting Turkishness." Shafak, who has reviewed for the Globe, could face up to three years in jail if convicted. Prosecutors contend that her novel "The Bastard of Istanbul" breaks the law because a character in it describes the deaths of Armenians in World War I as genocide.
So here's how the world can work. In Boston, Armenian Americans are expected to break ground on the Rose Kennedy Greenway soon for a stately memorial to victims of the tragedy, while in Istanbul the government threatens jail when a writer's fictional character simply refers to it. Stay tuned.