TE16 Turkish Delight

Editor’s Welcome

Turkish-Kurdish poet İlhan Sami Çomak writes beautiful, sensual, hypnotic poetry from his prison cell in Istanbul. He is 25 years through a likely 30-year prison sentence, having been convicted as a university student in the mid-1990s. His body of work deserves a wide audience in English. This is followed by an excerpt from Hakan Günday ’s Needlefish , an edgy, delightful coming of age tale of Turkish kids in Berlin. After that, Zeynep Çolakoğlu treats us to a bit of gothic horror with her short story, “Medusa.” Haydar Ergülen is one of Istanbul’s leading poetic lights, as a poet and editor, columnist, major festival organizer and university teacher of poetry. His poems function both as local fragments of emotional story and wise and polished windows, hinting at the tug of the all-in-all. Aslı Erdoğan is a prize-winning author and human-rights journalist, presently self-exiled in Germany. In this excerpt from The Stone Building , raw emotional conflict plays out in a poetic narrative of deep and furtive beauty. Then, this issue finishes with three sharp tales by feminist expatriate Turkish novelist Nazli Karabiyikoglu . Rounding it all out, our featured artist is the wonderful Turkish “street photographer” Hakan Bıyıklıoğlu , with images on our cover and throughout this issue at the start of each chapter.

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