Turkish prosecutors dropped charges against novelist Elif Shafak, on the first day of her trial for denigrating the national identity in a case monitored by the European Union as a benchmark for Turkey's human rights record. Prosecutors asked the Istanbul court to drop the charges against Shafak, said Fuat Turgut, a lawyer for the nationalist group that filed the initial complaint against the writer. Shafak, 34, was accused of "insulting Turkishness" in her best-selling novel, The Bastard of Istanbul.

The charges, under Article 301 of the country's penal code, stem from a passage in which one character, an ethnic Armenian, says "Turkish butchers" massacred his ancestors in a 1915 "genocide." The charges could have brought the writer a three-year jail sentence. "Writers should be answered in writing, not treated like armed criminals," Shafak told NTV television today after the case was dismissed. The EU has repeatedly told Turkey that prosecuting writers for expressing ideas isn't acceptable and said the country's year-old membership talks may break down if Turkey fails to improve human rights.

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"It's very regrettable the government has chosen not to revise or abolish Article 301 at this time and a worrying sign it's not committed to the reform process," said Emma Sinclair- Webb, a researcher on Turkey at Amnesty International in London. More than 40 writers, journalists, publishers, academics and others have been prosecuted under Article 301, introduced in May 2005 and designed to meet EU standards, said BiaNet, a press-advocacy group.

"There are still so many journalists, editors, translators, people from all sections of society on trial in Turkey for crimes of thought and expression," Shafak said today. "The basic question is, do we believe in freedom of expression?"