2016 French-Turkey Literature Prize Goes to Oya Baydar

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Oya Baydar's novel, "Hot Ashes Left" (Sıcak Külleri Kaldı) has been awarded this year's France-Turkey Literature Prize granted every year to works which are Turkey-oriented.

In 2012, the prize was awarded to Tahsin Yücel, in 2013 to sociologist Dilek Yankaya, in 2014 to Hakan Günday and in 2015 to Ahmet İnsel for his book "Erdoğan's new Turkey"

This year's jury under the presidency of Kenize Murad consisted of writers Venus Khoury, Nedim Gürsel, founder of ELELE Foundation Gaye Petek, Former Chair of France-Turkey Committee writer Alexandre Jevakhoff, executive of Anatoli Magazine Ali Kazancıgil as well as literatist Timour Muhidin.

The award ceremony will be held on December 7, in Paris 10th District Municipality. (YY/DG)

About Oya Baydar

Born in 1940, sociologist and writer Oya Baydar studied at Lycée Notre Dame de Sion Istanbul.

She published her first novel, inspired by French writer Françoise Sagan, while she was a student in high school. The novel she wrote in the last year of high school, God Has Forgot Children, was published both in the newspaper Hürriyet and as a book. She was almost expelled from her school as a result of writing this novel. After these novels written in high school years, she had a break from writing, interesting herself in politics for a long time, before returning to literature in later life.

She graduated from Istanbul University's Department of Sociology in 1964 and entered this department as an assistant. The Professors' Council of the University twice rejected her doctoral thesis, about the rise of a labour force in Turkey: students held down the University in order to protest that. That was the first university occupation in Turkey. Baydar then became an assistant in Hacettepe University.

During the military coup in 1972 she was arrested due to her socialist activity as a member of the Workers Party of Turkey and the Teachers' Union of Turkey and she left the University. Between 1972 and 1974 she worked as a columnist in the newspapers Yeni Ortam ([New Platform]) and Politika ([Politics]). She issued her first journal together with her husband Aydın Engin and Yusuf Ziya Bahadınlı. She was known as a socialist writer, researcher and activist woman.

During the 1980 military coup she went abroad and remained in exile for 12 years in Germany. There she lived in the falling period of socialist system. She told this period in 1991 in her story book called Farewell Alyosha. (Source: Wikipedia)