Turkey's most celebrated woman novelist was acquitted on Thursday of "insulting Turkishness", in a case regarded as a test of freedom of expression in the country.
Elif Shafak was cleared by the judge, Irfan Adil Uncu, shortly after the trial began because of lack of evidence she had committed an offence under article 301 of the penal code.
The author was not in court because she was recovering from giving birth last weekend. She had faced charges over comments made by her fictional characters on the massacre of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire during World War One.
"I'm very happy with the outcome but only on a personal basis. As long as 301 is out there and interpreted or misinterpreted like that there'll be many other cases like this... This is not the last one," she told Reuters news agency from hospital.
Ms Shafak, whose bestselling novels often challenge the humourlessness of official Turkish attitudes to history, politics and culture, is the latest writer to be prosecuted in cases brought by a nationalist lawyers' group that has become obsessed with silencing liberals and intellectuals.
The prosecution was being monitored closely by the European parliament and human rights organisations, and had attracted wide publicity.
A Turkish citizen, Ms Shafak lives in the US, where she teaches at the University of Arizona.
"This case will do damage to Turkey's image and reputation internationally, and so it should," said Richard Howitt, a British member of the European parliament who is in Turkey to monitor the trial.
The lawyers' group prosecutes its targets under Article 301 of the penal code, which aims to shield the Turkish state and its institutions from criticism. Their most famous victim is the novelist Orhan Pamuk. He was tried last year for remarks about the massacre of Armenians as the Ottoman empire collapsed in 1915-1916, which Turkey insists was not the 20th century's first genocide.
Mr Pamuk's trial, which led to street clashes between his supporters and detractors, eventually collapsed. Ms Shafak's case is eerily similar. A character in her novel The Bastard of Istanbul uses the term "genocide" in a way that upset the lawyers' group.
Turkey has so far resisted intense pressure to abolish or amend Article 301, damaging its relations with the European Union. There are now fears that it will be used to silence other dissident voices – some 80 cases are pending – amid a noticeable rise in nationalist sentiment in Turkey in response to a surge in Kurdish separatist violence and hostility in Europe to Turkey's bid to join the EU.
Mehmet Ali Birand, a liberal commentator, argued on Wednesday that the government was refusing to address Article 301 because ministers did not want to upset nationalist opinion ahead of next year's general election. "They fear that any effort on their part to change or annul the article may hurt their chances in the elections," he wrote in his newspaper column.
In a further sign of how sensitive some Turkish leaders can be to criticism, a court on Wednesday fined a journalist for a newspaper column about the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The court upheld Mr Erdogan's complaint that the article suggested he was mentally ill.
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sieg heil in turkish?
