They cover how the pandemic has effected that situation, and her writing since 2016 and how exile has affected her work. The questions I sent her covered the repressive situation in Turkey now and how it has changed since 2016. Once crossed Recep Erdoğan, like Trump, never tires of attacking his opponents. She tells how, although she left Turkey in 2017, a campaign in Turkey vilifying her goes on unabated in her absence. Those she points out, no matter how they fail abroad, serve to rally his supporters.

That campaign of repression has gotten pushed aside in the news not only by the global pandemic, but also by Erdoğan’s clumsy misadventures in Syria and the eastern Mediterranean. She speaks of the effects of the Covidvirus on the continuing crackdown and especially on those still imprisoned.

She also discusses the continuing campaign by the other Erdoğan against all dissent in Turkey and now even against dissenters in exile like herself. The charges made against her, the trial, the dismissal of the charges and then their reinstatement-all of that and more is recounted below in her own words. Writers, journalists, lawyers, politicians, military officers et al found themselves swept up and thrown in prison in the weeks that followed.Īslı Erdoğan was imprisoned in Turkey for more than four months. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan used that event as a pretext to move against people in all professions whose only offense was their public opposition to him. She was one of the fifty to sixty thousand people arrested in the crackdown that followed the attempted coup. That article was published here in CounterPunch (“The Stone Building” and the Post Coup Erdoğan Crackdown, Oct.16, 2016). I first wrote about her after she was arrested in August 2016 in the wake of the failed coup in Turkey in July of that year. Something she discusses in this interview. It was that activity that landed her in hot water. She is also known for her human rights activity both in Turkey and elsewhere. Her works have won numerous international literary prizes. She is a renowned author in Turkey, and well known in Europe where works have been translated into English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and possibly some other languages. This interview with the Turkish author Aslı Erdoğan was conducted by mail in recent weeks.

The ghost inside my endnote