Doctor Honoris Causa & Honorary Title Difference Day 2020
Elif Shafak, DIFFERENCE DAY 2020 HONORARY TITLE
Elif Shafakisa is a Turkis-British writer, academic and women’s right activist.She lives in the UK and writes in Turkish and English and has published successful novels and essays, translated in more than 50 languages.She is a courageous activist for women’s rights, for minority rights and for freedom of speech and expression.In the Guardian, she published a critical analysis of the situation in Turkey.
Her conclusion applies to all authoritarian regimes: “Wherever there is a decline in a democracy we will see an increase in censorship and intolerance. Today, more than ever before, literature has to be not only about stories but also about silences and the silenced. It has to become a sanctuary for the disempowered and the marginalised across the world.
Ahmet Altan, DIFFERENCE DAY HONORARY TITLE 2021
Ahmet Altan is a renowned Turkish author, journalist and former editor-in-chief of the Taraf, a daily newspaper which is now banned.In September 2016 he was arrested for the first time. He was accused of being a member of the Gûlen movement and thus of the coup attempt against. the Turkish leader, Erdogan.
In 2018 Altan was sentenced to life in prison on a very vague charge. In November last year, he was released on probation, but a few days later the police detained him again after ruling reversing his release. Today he is still in prison.Amnesty International considers him as a prisoner of conscience and asks for his immediate release.
In his prison cell, he wrote and published his memoirs under the title: I will never see the World Again. Speaking truth to power, tht’s what Ahmet Altan has been doing all his life.
In his memoirs he writes: “You can imprison me but you cannot keep me here. Because, like all writers, I have magic, I can pass through your walls with ease.“