Elif Shafak, a UA assistant professor/author, has been charged in Turkey with "insulting Turkishness."

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The University of Arizona assistant professor facing prison in Turkey for "insulting Turkishness" says she's being targeted because of the political and sexual taboos in her latest novel.

"I feel frustrated and rather sad at the moment," Elif Shafak wrote in an e-mail to the Daily Star. "The book questions two big taboos, one of them a political taboo — the Armenian Question — and the other, a sexual taboo — incest. So it was not easy to digest for some people and it caused a lot of stir."

Shafak said she will stand trial specifically because of the words uttered by fictional Armenian characters in her novel "The Bastard of Istanbul" — a book she wrote while she was living in Tucson. In the book, an Armenian character refers to "Turkish butchers."

The Turkish government and some international historians reject the claim that a mass evacuation and related deaths of up to 1.5 million Armenians living in Turkey from 1915 to 1923 was genocide. Most Armenian and Western scholars say the massacres were genocide, but Turkey has denied it, saying only that many Armenians died of starvation, disease and exposure on forced marches to Syria in retaliation against the Christian minority for reportedly collaborating with Russia during World War I.

Shafak, 35, who works in the UA's department of Near Eastern studies, is a well-known and celebrated author in Turkey. She said her book was released there on March 8 — International Women's Day — and already has sold more than 50,000 copies. A Turkish citizen, Shafak is pregnant and on a one-year leave from her teaching post at the UA.

The charges against Shafak were filed under the controversial Article 301 of the Turkish Criminal Code. The public prosecutor in Istanbul dismissed initial proceedings against her after hearing her argument that the book was a work of literature and therefore not appropriate for prosecution.

But in early July, Istanbul's Seventh High Criminal Court overruled the decision not to proceed, following a complaint filed by a member of a group of right-wing lawyers known as the "Unity of Jurists," that has been active in the prosecutions of numerous writers and journalists in recent months.

"The ultranationalists reacted bitterly, and what is happening now is a backlash," Shafak wrote to the Star. "Unfortunately, I will stand trial."

No trial date has been set.

Shafak, who is being supported by the Writers in Prison Committee at International PEN, a worldwide group of writers, anticipates that having international support will make a huge difference in her case. Turkey currently is trying to join the European Union.

Shafak holds a master's degree in gender and women studies and earned a doctorate from the department of political science at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey.

Before joining the faculty at the UA, she was at the University of Michigan, where the courses she taught included "Women Writing on Women: East-West Encounters" and "The Queer in the Middle East."

At the UA, her courses include "Literature and Exile," "Politics of Memory," and "Sexualities and Gender in the Muslim World."