Thomas de Waal on sending Osman Kavala books to read in Silivri Prison.
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Something Shadowless, Like You: Nedim Türfent Writes Back to Ai Weiwei from Prison
Kurdish poet and journalist Nedim Türfent responds to Ai Weiwei’s postcard.
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The Great Homeless of Literature
Selahattin Demirtaş on ‘home’, state-sanctioned writing, and what makes literature literature. Translated by Kate Ferguson.
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Hope in a Bottle of Honey
Kurdish writer Nurcan Baysal responds to a letter from Nedim Türfent.
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This Is Not an Arthur Koestler Novel – This Is Turkey
Can Bahadır Yüce writes on Turkey’s response to coronavirus, and calls for the release of at-risk political prisoners
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Silence, Our Noisy Silence: A Conversation with Sema Kaygusuz and Nicholas Glastonbury
Sema Kaygusuz and Nicholas Glastonbury discuss shame, representation and the Turkish language.
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No time for arrogance: a conversation with Ece Temelkuran
It has become the motto of our age to say, ‘Oh I hate politics’ – without realising that that is the most political statement you can come up with.
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Home, Tarçın and my mother
I wished I could explain what had happened since we had last met. How people were rounded up late at night and how at sunrise, it looked as though nothing had happened. How dad was imprisoned for his journalism, shot at, exiled to Germany.
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Darker, longer, tougher, stronger
If this were a novel, the writer might have preferred an epiphany to occur right here; but in reality, it took some more time to realise how I had changed in the four seasons I had been away.
Read MoreThe Writer’s Paradox
I am writing this in a prison cell. But I am not in prison. I am a writer.
Read MoreYazarın paradoksu
Ahmet Altan was imprisoned in Turkey with his brother Mehmet in September 2016. Despite being denied access to receiving and sending written communications, he wrote The Writer’s Paradox for publication on the eve of his trial, which starts on 19 September. We have been campaigning to raise awareness of Ahmet’s plight as part of our…
Read MoreEditing a book review: a dangerous act in Turkey
As Cumhuriyet journalists await their verdict in Turkey, Can Bahadır Yüce pays tribute to his imprisoned colleagues and reflects on the link between populism and anti-intellectualism.
Read MoreIf This is a Lament
Exclusive preview of the title poem, ‘If this is a lament’, from a new chapbook of work by Turkish poet Bejan Matur, translated by Jen Hadfield and Canan Marasligil.
Read MoreWrite, write, otherwise we are lost
The translator and activist reflects on the role of literature in a country in crisis, ahead of English PEN’s event ‘PEN Atlas presents: the View from Turkey’ on 19 September.
Read MoreThe seizure of a book review
On 4 March 2016, Kitap Zamanı, the literary supplement of Turkey’s largest newspaper Zaman, was shut down by the government. Poet Can Bahadır Yüce reflects on the future of press freedom in Turkey.
Read MoreBut why do you write your books in English and Turkish?
Elif Shafak investigates what makes the bilingual author choose to write in one language and not another
Read MoreThe Greatest Turkish Novel?
Kaya Genç discusses the cultural and literary legacy of Hamdi Tanpınar whose 1961 novel ‘The Time Regulation Institute’ was published this year as a Penguin Classic.
Read MorePEN Atlas: literary dispatches from Turkey
Maureen Freely introduces an exclusive new e-book from PEN Atlas, collecting some of the best journalism, memoir, essays and dispatches from Turkey, at a moment when the country is poised in the middle of great changes, both political and literary
Read MoreLiving by the pen
What is the cost of going on the payroll for a writer in Turkey?
Read MoreA literature in search of its language
Ciwanmerd Kulek charts the ongoing struggle for the Kurdish language, and whether being a language that is now more written than spoken threatens it in new and troubling ways
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