Author Aslı Erdoğan unable to receive her award

Author Aslı Erdoğan, who has won the Princess Margriet award that is bestowed by the European Cultural Foundation on internationally recognised members of the arts world, will be unable to attend the ceremony on 9 May due to a ban on travelling abroad in the Özgür Gündem trial.

Erdoğan, saying that every award ceremony she is unable to attend leaves a black mark that will take a long time to erase, said, ‘The whole world has seen the treatment that Turkey sees fit for its authors. This country has until now thrown more than one hundred and sixty poets and writers in jail and has basically maintained a constant silence with an incomprehensible malice and has lacerated its own conscience by refusing to face the truth.’ Timour Muhidine, publishing editor of French publishing house Actes Sud, will receive the award, to be presented by the Dutch Queen herself, on behalf of Erdoğan. At the ceremony, to be attended by Sevinç Türkkan, English translator of The Stone Building, and lawyer Erdal Doğan, a video devoted to Aslı Erdoğan will be shown. Erdoğan, who won the Kurt Tucholsky prize and was elected an Honorary Member of PEN in November, was unable to receive the awards because she was in prison. The author, who remains subject to a travel ban despite having been released, was deemed worthy of the Theodor Heuss Medal (Germany) and the Bruno Kreisky Prize for Human Rights (Austria) but was unable to go and receive these awards, either.