Foto: privat

Pinar Selek was born in Istanbul in 1971, attended a French high school there and studied sociology at the Mimar Sinan University. She helped to organize various protest events for the women’s movement and founded the feminist network Amargi (she is the publisher of its magazine). In her journalistic work, she examines the peace movement, the exclusion of minorities and the relationship between militarism and the development of gender identity. Her sociological study of the Kurdish question was a thorn in the side of some circles in Turkey. To make her less of a threat, in 1998 she was falsely accused of carrying out an attack. She went to prison for two and a half years and was severely tortured. Released from detention before trial, she spent the sixteen years of the judicial procedures continuing her work. Eventually, she was acquitted in three consecutive trials. Nevertheless, the state prosecutor still calls for the maximum ruling of “a life sentence under stringent conditions”. From the summer of 2009, Pinar Selek lived in Germany and from December 2009 to November 2011, she took part in the PEN Writers in Exile Program. She has written several non-fiction books on sociological issues and published numerous articles in Turkish and Kurdish newspapers and magazines. In the spring of 2010, she published her book Cuddled to Manhood – Drilled to Manhood, and in December 2011, she released her first novel Halved Hopes. In the spring of 2014, the court in Ankara finally accepted her appeal and the new trial came once again in motion, finally, she was acquitted for the fourth time. Pinar Selek currently lives in Strasbourg, where she obtained her doctorate.