Turkish Centre

Turkish PEN Centre / PEN Centre of Turkey (PEN TR)

Beyoglu iş Merkezi
Istiklal Caddesi, B Blok Ofis: 143
Beyoğlu-Istanbul
Turkey

Tel:+90 212 292 00 26 (Mon, Tues, Thurs, 16.00-18.00 /GMT + 2) 
www.pen.org.tr

President: Tarık Günersel  tarik.gunersel@pen.org.tr
Secretary: Prof. Aysu Erden (Ms)  aysuerden@cankaya.edu.tr

Related Events: Turkish PEN will send out information to the press and support the poem relay by meetings.

• The Turkish PEN centre was founded in Istanbul in 1950. The first President was a woman novelist and an active democrat: Halide Edip Adıvar. The Centre was closed down after the military coup in 1980. It was re-established in 1989, under the leadership of Yaşar Kemal, who then became the new President.
• In the spirit of the PEN Charter, PEN TR has always had an internationalist stand and has been against violence,  defending secularism and promoting democratization, labour and women’s rights and peace. PEN Turkey defends the right of every citizen to speak, write and publish in any language. Our Translation and Linguistic Rights Committee is preparing a catalogue that embraces all the languages spoken in Turkey:  Kurdish, Armenian, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic… as a symbol of democratic solidarity, which is needed everywhere on our planet.
• PEN TR brought the idea of World Poetry Day to the 67th Congress (Edinburgh,1997), seconded by Sydney PEN. International PEN took the idea to UNESCO. Since then World Poetry Day has been celebrated annually on 21 March.
• PEN TR proposes and celebrates the World Short Story Day on 14 February – the brainchild of the story writer Özcan Karabulut , currently the Ankara Representative of PEN. Prof. Aysu Erden has been active in spreading the news and invitations to celebrate the day globally. This idea is supported by International PEN and several sister centres, and we hope that UNESCO will accept it as well.
• Literature – especially in non-dominant languages – can be supported by sister PEN centres through collaboration. Thus Turkish PEN has recently started to present annual international awards – ‘award’ in the sense of a ‘sign of gratitude’. The first one in the name of Halide Edip Adıvar, the Centre’s founder is presented to Vlada Urosevic, a leading member of Macedonian PEN. The Turkish PEN Poetry Award in the name of the first great poet of Turkish language Yunus Emre, a 13th century humanist has recently been presented to Pablo Armando Fernandez of  Cuba. We hope that such awards will lead to more translations and intercultural understanding.

Read and listen to the poem in...

Turkish