Aslı Ceren Aslan was born in Istanbul in 1990 and graduated from Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Department of Mathematics in 2014. Between 2014 and 2021, Aslan worked in various positions as a...
PEN/Opp has posed the following question to some authors with a Kurdish background, who write in other languages, first and foremost in Turkish: – In the history of literature, we find authors who...
Lorîn S. Dogan was born in 1975 in Nusaybin, in the province of Mardin. She is an educated biologist. She has published three collections of short stories so far. She lives in Diyarbakir.
Rewşen Bedir-Khan was born in 1909 in Turkey and died in 1992 in Syria. She was a writer, translator and a co-worker at the magazine Hawar, the only female writer. Bedir-Khan was married to Hawar's...
As an admirable reader of his second novel Masumlar (Innocents) I was looking for an opportunity to meet with Burhan Sonmez in person, but it was not realized until our common friend Moris Farhi put...
What is the significance of culture and literature for an oppressed people and a forbidden language? How is literature kept alive when language is strangled? The Kurdish writer Suzan Samancis tries to...
Ceren Aslan writes news and articles on political developments in Turkey and around the world, especially on women's and LGBTI+ journalism. For seven years, she worked in various positions as a...
PenOpp publishes a chapter from the Turkish author Barbaros Altuğ's novel Spiritual Wounds, which was published in Turkish last year. The novel's main character Derin, a Turkish journalist who grew up...
“I explained as thoroughly as I could that one of the words was the name of my lands, the other of my hometown, and that Newroz is a festivity that Kurds have celebrated for thousands of years. At...
In Turkey during the pandemic hundreds of students have been forced to move back home to their families, entailing a risk for those who have other values than their parents or are otherwise exposed in...
The right to use the Kurdish language has been a major controversy in Turkey all through the Republic’s existence. Ciwanmerd Kulek belongs to the younger generation of Kurdish writers who out of...
