Either Grant Me The Bliss Of The

I Like To Borrow A Metaphor From The Great Poet And Mystic Rumi Who Talks About Living Like A Drawing Compass. One Leg Of The Compass Is Static. It Is Fixed And Rooted In A Certain Spot. Meanwhile, The Other Leg Draws A Huge Wide Circle Around The First One, Constantly Moving. Just Like That, One Part Of My Writing Is Based In Istanbul. It Has Strong Local Roots. Yet At The Same Time The Other Part Travels The Whole Wide World, Feeling Connected To Several Cities, Cultures, And Peoples.

Love Cannot Be Explained, Yet It Explains All.

I Am Very Worried About This Concentration Of Power, And It's Not Only Because Of Erdogan. We Have The Ballot Box, But We Don't Have The Culture Of Democracy. The Government Says: You See, We Have The Majority, We're Entitled To Do Anything We Want. But That's Not Democracy, That's Majoritarianism.

Words Are Heavy In Turkey, And Every Writer, Every Poet And Every Journalist Knows That, Because Of A Word, Because Of A Sentence, Because Of A Tweet Or Even A Retweet, You Can Be Sued, You Can Be Demonized By The Media And You Can Even Land In Prison.

Where There Is Love, There Is Bound To Be Heartache.