Ece Temelkuran

Ece Temelkuran — Biography

Ece Temelkuran is a journalist, novelist and poet who was twice named Turkey's most-read political columnist. She became internationally known for How to Lose a Country (2019), which sets out seven steps by which a democracy slides into authoritarian rule. She has lived outside Turkey since 2017, and her columns have appeared in outlets such as The Guardian, The New York Times and Le Monde Diplomatique.

A 1995 graduate of Ankara University's law faculty, she began in journalism while still a student, writing for Cumhuriyet from 1993. She reported on the women's movement, political prisoners and the country's southeast, travelled to Brazil and India for the World Social Forum, and wrote about Venezuela in Biz Burada Devrim Yapıyoruz Sinyorita!. From 2000 to 2009 she wrote the "Kıyıdan" column in Milliyet, and she turned the political prisoners' hunger strikes into Ne Anlatayım Ben Sana! and her interviews with Armenians into Deep Mountain. At Habertürk she both wrote and presented a television programme; her employment ended in January 2012 after articles criticising the handling of the December 2011 Uludere incident.

She turned to literature through poetry (Kıyı Kitabı) and her first novel Muz Sesleri (2010). Women Who Blow on Knots (2013) brought her the Edinburgh International Book Festival's First Book Award, while Devir (2015) revisits the 1980 coup. Nation of Strangers (2026) was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction. She received the Ayşe Zarakolu Freedom of Thought Award in 2008 and El Mundo's press freedom award in 2023.