Aslı Erdoğan is a Turkish writer, physicist and human rights activist. She studied computer science and physics at Boğaziçi University and subsequently worked at CERN in Geneva, where she wrote her first novel alongside her master’s thesis. «Kabuk Adam» (transl. The Shell Man) was published in 1994. Rather than completing the doctoral studies she had begun in Rio de Janeiro, she finished the novella «Mucizevi Mandarin» (1996; transl. The Wondrous Mandarin) and became a full time writer.
In her work, she explores her Turkish origins and the experience of foreignness with an undogmatic eye. The short story «Tahta kuşlar» (transl. Wooden Birds) won the Deutsche Welle Prize in 1996. Her novel «Kırmızı Pelerinli Kent» (1998; transl. The City in Crimson Cloak) has been translated into more than twelve languages. The novel «Taş Bina ve Diğerleri» (2009; transl. The Stone Building) received the Sait Faik Short Story Award in 2010, Turkey’s most significant literary prize.
From 1998 to 2001, she wrote a column for the newspaper «Radikal», and from 2011 for the Kurdish Turkish newspaper «Özgür Gündem», addressing human rights issues and state repression against Kurds. Following the failed military coup in Turkey, she was arrested in August 2016 together with other journalists from «Özgür Gündem» and spent several months in pretrial detention before being released under judicial supervision at the end of 2016. Her essays from this period were published bilingually in 2017 under the title «Artık Sessizlik Bile Senin Değil» (transl. Not Even Silence Is Ours Anymore). For her commitment, she was awarded, among others, the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize (2017) and the Prix Simone de Beauvoir pour la liberté des femmes (2018).
In September 2017, Erdoğan left Turkey and initially lived as a fellow of the »Stadt der Zuflucht« (City of Refuge) programme in Frankfurt am Main; since 2020 she has lived in Berlin. The years long court case against her ended in February 2022 with a final acquittal. Her most recent novel, «Requiem für eine verlorene Stadt» (2022; transl. Requiem for a Lost City), was published in German. Aslı Erdoğan lives in Berlin.
Last Update: 2026
