Turkey

Fiction

Numbers, people

Aslı Erdoğan is one of the foremost writers in Turkey, who never shies away from sensitive topics. She has suffered harassment for her work and has been forced to live in exile. Despite this, she has...

Text: Aslı Erdoğan September 27 2012

Fiction

Turkey's freedom of speech is crumbling

The writer and publisher Ragip Zarkolu is an honorary member of Swedish PEN. He has over the years published numerous books on subjects that are sensitive in the modern Turkey. Until last week, he was...

Text: Raqip Zarakolu April 17 2012

Article

How’s Your Slavery Goin’?

Secularism and the role of religion have always been charged subjects in Turkey—perhaps more today than ever before. Tarik Günersel, playwright and President of Turkish PEN gives us his views on...

Text: Tarik Günersel April 17 2012

Fiction

Letter from a cell

The Kurdish author, lawyer and human rights activist Muharrem Erbey was jailed in December 2009 and has since then been hidden and placed in the notorious prison of Diyarbakir. He is among other...

Text: Muharrem Erbey September 22 2011

Article

Mats Johansson: “Erbey risks becoming a new Dawit Isaak”

One of the charges brought against the Kurdish writer and lawyer Muharrem Erbey, imprisoned without trial since the Christmas of 2009, is that he gave a lecture in the Swedish Parliament where he...

Text: Mats Johansson September 22 2011

Fiction

A letter to Ahmet

What is happening to freedom of speech in Turkey today? This is a question that the writer Çiğdem Mater raises in this letter to her friend and colleague, Ahmet Sik, who was arrested on March 3. She...

Text: Çiğdem Mater July 07 2011