Evrim Alataş

Evrim Alataş — Biography

Evrim Alataş was a journalist, writer and screenwriter who built her work around the Kurdish question and the marks that years of conflict left on ordinary people. She is described as the first female Kurdish writer of Turkey. Today her name is tied both to the story behind the film Min Dît, set among the children of Diyarbakır, and to the prize created in her memory. Journalists mark the anniversary of her death each April.

Her career began in 1994 at Yeni Politika. She went on to work as a reporter and then an editor at papers such as Demokrasi, Özgür Bakış and Ülkede Özgür Gündem, wrote columns on and off for Evrensel, BirGün and Özgür Politika, and published essays in magazines such as Birikim and Amargi. Her last column, "Kürtler Vadisi", ran in Taraf. Her books return to the same subject: Mayoz Bölünme Hikayeleri appeared from Aram in 2003 and Her Dağın Gölgesi Deniz'e Düşer from İletişim in 2009. A story she wrote with director Miraz Bezar became the feature film Min Dît, which premiered in Diyarbakır in spring 2009 and won an award at the 46th Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival.

Alataş died of cancer, which she had fought for a long time, at her home in Diyarbakır on 12 April 2010. After a ceremony in the city she was buried, as she had asked, in her native village of Gölpınar. Since 2011 the Faculty of Communication at Ankara University has given the Evrim Alataş Prize Against Discrimination (İLEF); recipients include Ragıp Zarakolu and Pınar Öğünç.