Aslı Erdoğan

Aslı Erdoğan is a renowned novelist and human rights activist known for works like The Stone Building and Other Places and her columns at Özgür Gündem, a pro-Kurdish daily newspaper. On August 16, 2016, Erdoğan was detained in her home by Istanbul police as part of a police raid of Özgür Gündem, which was shut down by decree as part of the countrywide state of emergency following the failed coup of July 15. Twenty of her colleagues were also detained. Turkish courts stated that the paper published “propaganda for the PKK,” the Kurdistan Workers Party, which is listed as a terrorist group, and acted “as its de facto news outlet.” On December 29, when the trial began, Erdoğan was granted a conditional release from detention but subjected to a travel ban. When the ban was lifted, in June 2017, Erdoğan fled to Germany in self-imposed exile to avoid prosecution. Her trial and that of her colleagues continued in absentia until she was finally acquitted on February 14, 2020. But just four months later, a public prosecutor appealed her case to a higher court in Istanbul. She now faces renewed charges of sedition, membership in a terrorist organization, and use of propaganda.

From the artist:

When I was working for the newspaper Radikal, nobody really wrote about torture victims, especially in the press. Nobody wrote about Black people, nobody wrote about Turks, or Roma. I took the little stories, always personal stories, of the victim. And then I started to learn. I thought I knew Turkey because my parents were leftists—I had seen police violence, I had lived with Black people, I had seen the violence of both the state and society. But I didn’t know what the Kurds were going through. I didn’t know what the Roma were going through. The more I wrote, the more I was surprised by Turkey. And as I was one of the very few who wrote about such things, people started coming to me with their stories, for me to write. It was the most beautiful part of my career.

I was continuously threatened by the police. But they didn’t do anything major, they didn’t put me in jail—they could have, but they did not. What they did was, for five consecutive days, every time I entered my apartment and went into the living room, the phone rang. On the second day, you get suspicious. And by the fourth day, you start to get so paranoid, so scared. You know, these are psychologically calculated things.

The threats didn’t change my writing, but they changed my psychology. I became a more paranoid person, I became more and more reluctant to leave the apartment. I think that the only support I received was from five female writers who came together to defend me and my book. And they too received pressure from many writers. One of them was threatened that she would never publish her books again. Until I went to prison, I think the only other support came from the Kurds. But when I went to prison, everything changed. Suddenly people were very supportive and very much in solidarity. Prison was, in a way, a positive change in my life. People discovered, at least, that I was telling the truth.

I do believe in what I write about. I do believe that the story of the victim must be told. And I keep carrying on as much as I can. At least I didn’t give in to fear while I was in prison. I stood on my own path. So this is another lesson I learned, that fear is manageable. And also I learned that solidarity is not just a fancy word. It exists, and it helps—it has to.