CALL FOR WOMAN WRITER ASLI ERDOGAN IMPRISONED IN TURKEY

Please kindly distribute this call to all women and transsexual women around you, in the way of the language uttered here...

Dear All,

Aslı Erdogan, one of the most important writers of today’s Turkish literature, was taken into custody on August 17, 2016 and has been imprisoned at Bakirkoy Closed Prison For Women since August 19.

Aslı Erdogan, whose books have been translated into 17 languages so far, who has won many important literature prizes both in Turkey and in Europe, who was elected to be one of the “future’s 50 writers” in an inquiry by the French Literatute Journal Lire to determine the writers that would mark 21st century, lately won Tucholsky prize presented by Swedish PEN while she was still in prison.

Being a female conscientious objector and an antimilitarist, Aslı Erdogan poetically analyzes violence to its historical, philosophical and psychological extents, never neglecting to emphasize its phallocentric dimention in her columns as well as in her stories, novels and essays. Object of her stories has always been an injured collective woman. She has told these through an intensely agonizing literary language as if making two skinned bodies touch each other.

Having studied ballet and worked at theatres as well, Aslı Erdogan once worked at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research as a physicist. She started to write and quitted physics in Brasil while she was working there on her academic career.

Though it is clearly stated in the Press Law within the Turkish Legal System that there is no legal and criminal provision, Aslı Erdogan was arrested with the claim of “aggravated life imprisonment” and the accusation for “disrupting the unity and integrity of the state” and “being a member of a terrorist organization” while being an “editorial consultant” in Kurdish newspaper “Ozgur Gundem” (Free Agenda), which is a symbolical title, and for four articles, one of which was published in Turkish literature journal Karakarga and three of which were published in Ozgur Gundem, despite the nonexistence of any rational evidence against her and any crime factors in accordance with the current Turkish legal system.

Despite her poor health condition, Aslı Erdogan is still kept in prison though no bill of indictment by prosecution has been ready and no claims have been filed. Her attorney’s petitions for her being on trial without arrest, are being rejected repeatedly.

What is being done to Erdogan is a crime against humanity; it is to judge the freedom of thought and expression as a human right according to both Turkish laws and international agreements to which Turkey is also a party.

“Women riddled in murders, lifted me up; we were squashed into a poky basement. We were all crying in our mother tongues...” from the play “Merhaba” by Asli Erdogan.

Women from all over the world will give voice increasingly in the internet by reading Asli’s sentences from her books in their native languages and Asli’s voice until her unjust suffering ends and Asli is free and her conscientious imprisonment is over. In her letter from the prison, Aslı Erdogan says “Not only freedom of thought, but conscience is also being judged”.

“Women riddled in murders, lifted me up; we were squashed into a poky basement. We were all crying in our mother tongues... My mother looked at my face at length and said ‘All the city’s women cry at some point at night without failure...” from the play “Merhaba” by Asli Erdogan

You can also give voice and expand her voice by reading one or two paragraphs from one of Asli’s books of your ion.

What you should do is only to hold one of Asli’s books and read one or two paragraphs that you choose, in your own language in front of a camera screen.

You can the campaign “I READ ASLI ERDOGAN” by sending this video recorded by any cameras or android cells to either Flying Broom Women’s Communication and Research Association (info@ucansupurge.org) or FilmMor International Travelling Women Film Festival and Cooperative (medya@filmmor.com), including your name, surname, the name of the book you have read and your occupation.

This campaign is open to all women and transsexual—women from all over the world, speaking any languages and from all occupations (writers, workers, unemployed, farmers, academicians, artists, lawyers, sex workers, social experts, actors, musicians, physicians, critics, businesswomen, sportswomen, etc.)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmDMyak7aVS4LttkgCgXRkg

“We are angels fluttering on the very spot with our wings that can never open. We are standing so close to each other, one of us’ tears are running on the other’s face. What are we waiting for, as such a crowd?” – Asli Erdogan, from her book “Silence of Life”.

Asli Erdogan’s books were translated into 17 languages such as English, French, Italian, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Arabic, Albanian, Macedonian, Kurdish, Lithuanian, Dutch, Chinese, Indonesian and Armenian.

“We are, killed women of cities, are riddled by thin and transparent murders. We are crying for the blood running from our tongues, clenched, side by side, shoulder to shoulder, face to face in the basement of the languages built with the words generated for us for centuries. I am not praying for it to stop anymore in my own language. There is no need for it. As I am running from the toilet holes to drains, from drains to bushes, from bushes to pebbles, I realized that our mother tongues are just sound systems which are not divine or different from or superior to any other language when the male myth of the language becomes scant... I am a woman whose tongue was cut.” from the play “Merhaba” by Asli Erdogan

Best regards,