PEN Turkey Writers’ Association has given this year’s women’s rights award, which is named after the late feminist writer and journalist Duygu Asena, to the founder of SES Equality and Solidarity Association, Gülseren Onanç, feminist writer and sociologist Pınar Selek and singer and activist Haluk Levent.
This year, the association has broadened the scope of the Award and decided to give it to three people representing three organizations:
“We are going through extraordinary times. We are grappling with unprecedented suffering. Although the authoritarian one-man regime that has replaced the parliamentary regime defines this extraordinary and painful situation as a “fateful plan”, we believe that if the beloved Duygu Asena were alive today, she would definitely oppose this; she would run to help like every person who has a conscience, things to write, human love and social justice in her heart. In today’s circumstances, we have decided to broaden the scope of the 2023 Duygu Asena Award in her name this year and to give it to three people representing three organisations.”
Gülseren Onanç, the founder of SES Equality and Solidarity Association (VOICE)
“With the SES Equality and Solidarity Association, and its media channel, SES Equality, Justice, Women’s Platform, she supported gender based journalism. She and her team have become the VOICE of women’s resistance and courage against the patriarchal order, violence and oppression against women in Turkey and the world in 2022. With her reading of the world from a feminist perspective, she became a symbol of hope for women who resist, question and herald the possibility of a different system.”
Pınar Selek, feminist writer and sociologist
“In a 25-year-long trial, 4 acquittals and expert reports, all of them saying that the explosion at the Spice Bazaar was caused by a “gas leak.” Anonymous denunciations, false testimonies taken under torture were revealed. After the case was kept pending for 8 years without being examined, the acquittal decision was overturned and an arrest warrant was issued for sociologist and writer Pınar Selek. On March 31, she will be pu on trial once again. Pınar Selek has been working in France since 2017 as a lecturer at the Cote d’Azur University (CNRS / Université Côte d’Azur / Université Paris Cité) and also at the Women’s Solidarity Federation. She continues her feminist and social research, which she started in Turkey, writing her books and giving conferences in various cities. We call for justice for all.
Haluk Levent, the founder of AHBAP
Since the morning of February 6, he has pierced the conscience of everyone living in this country, men and women, young and old, children and babies, through his solidarity and relief network AHBAP Association. Despite all the obstacles, threats, pressures and troll armies, he has shown a magnificent example of solidarity and effort with determination, courage, embracing everyone, in the way he knows is right, without any discrimination.”