Freedom Lecture: Ece Temelkuran

As part of the Amsterdam 2013 celebrations, De Balie is collaborating with Amnesty International and Prins Claus Foundation to host The Freedom Lecture. The next edition takes place on Tuesday, 17 December 2013, and features Turkish writer and journalist Ece Temelkuran.

Ece Temelkuran (1973) is a writer of fiction, non-fiction and poetry as well as a journalist and political reporter, writing for Turkisch newspapers, The Guardian, New Statesman*, al Akhbar, New Left Review and Le Monde Diplomatique. Her newspaper articles cover subjects that are considered highly controversial in Turkey, such as the Armenian-Kurdish relations, the women’s rights movement and the issue of political prisoners. Turkish newspaper Habertürk fired her as a columnist for writing critical pieces on the treatment of the Kurdish.

Nonetheless, her columns and articles are published worldwide and she won numerous awards for her journalistic achievements, such as the Pen for Peace Award, the Free Thought and Democracy Award and the award for Turkish Journalist of the Year. Furthermore, Temelkuran was a ‘visiting fellow’ at the Oxford University’s department of Journalism. She published twelve books, of which two were translated in English: the non-fiction title Deep Mountain, Across the Turkish-Armenian Divide (2010), and Book of the Edge (2010), an allegorical journey in poetry.