Elif Shafak
Elif Şafak is a Turkish novelist and journalist born on 25 October 1971 in Strasbourg, who writes in both Turkish and English.
Şafak was educated at Middle East Technical University, where she studied at the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences. Her career as a novelist and journalist developed across two languages, a dual practice that positions her work at the intersection of Turkish and broader international literary traditions. She has written notable works including Terra Incognita, The Forty Rules of Love, and Three Daughters of Eve, titles that together suggest a sustained engagement with questions of faith, identity, and the lives of women.
Her contributions to literature and public life have been recognized through several distinctions. She received the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from France, as well as the Ehrenpreis des österreichischen Buchhandels für Toleranz in Denken und Handeln, an Austrian booksellers' award recognizing tolerance in thought and action. She has also been included in the BBC 100 Women list and holds a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Literature, affiliations that reflect the reach of her work across European cultural institutions.
Şafak's fiction, produced across two languages and marked by titles that return repeatedly to the experiences of women and the textures of spiritual and cultural life, forms the consistent core of her literary output.
Quotes by Elif Shafak
Elif Shafak's insights on:
Many analysts compare Turkey with countries in the Middle East, but I think we need to compare it with Russia. Both countries come from a tradition of empire, and also from a tradition of the strong state.
Feminists are now being vilified in politics, erdogan used to speak more embracingly, saying he was the leader of everyone, whether they voted for him or not. He sounds as if he puts a distance between himself and half the nation.
Almost half of the Turkish population believes it is not legitimate to criticize the government. Interestingly, this correlates with the number of supporters of Erdogan’s government.
Sometimes I feel I have more faith in European ideals than some of my British or French friends. For them, it’s a financial burden. For me, Europe is primarily about values, about fundamental rights, freedom, women’s rights.
I would like the refugee crisis to become a new beginning in the Turkish-European relationship. But it would be very problematic if, during this process, human rights were forgotten. Democracy needs to be the priority.
Our politics is very masculine, very aggressive, and it’s very polarizing. And the pace of this development has increased in recent years. Erdogan is, in my eyes, the most polarizing politician in recent Turkish political history.
We cannot abandon this rabbit hole for fear of a traumatic encounter with our own culture.
I remember a time when it was ok to make fun of politicians and powerful people. Now, it’s not ok anymore. We’ve forgotten how to laugh.
I see two opposite tendencies in Turkish society: people feel demoralized, they lose the interest in politics and retreat to their private lives; or they become very angry and even more politicized, and radicalized. Both trends are troublesome.
But let us not forget that cities are like human beings. They are born, they go through childhood and adolescence, they grow old, and eventually they die.