Ece Temelkuran

Ece Temelkuran was born on 22 July 1973 in İzmir. She was a columnist for Milliyet (2000–2009) and Habertürk (2009 January 2012), and a presenter on Habertürk TV (2010–2011). She was fired from Habertürk after writing articles critical of the government, especially its handling of the December 2011 Uludere massacre. She was twice named Turkey's "most read political columnist". Her columns have also been published in international media such as The Guardian, The New York Times, La Stampa, Der Spiegel, Internazionale and Le Monde Diplomatique. For her book Turkey: The Insane and the Melancholy, she won the Edinburgh International Book Festival First Book award for her novel Women Who Blow On Knots and the Ambassador Of New Europe Award. She was awarded the Human Rights Association of Turkey's Ayşe Zarakolu Freedom of Thought Award in 2008. In 2019, she published the internationally acclaimed nonfiction book How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship, about the rise of right-wing populism and how it operates. 2021 saw the publication of her non-fiction book “Together: 10 Choices for a Better Now” extolling the virtues of humanity and the need to be “together”. In 2023, she received the El Mundo International Journalism Awards in the Freedom of the Press category for her body of work. Temelkuran was longlisted for the 2026 Women's Prize for Non-Fiction for Nation of Strangers. == Works ==