Ayşe Berktay was released from Bakirköy Women’s Prison in Istanbul on December 20, 2013. She still faces a lengthy trial process, after which she could face up to 15 years in prison if convicted of the charge of “membership in an illegal organization.” Additionally, on August 9, 2016, she was one of several staff members of Özgür Gündem whose passports were ordered to be canceled by Istanbul’s 14th Court of Serious Crimes. On May 21, 2019, an Istanbul Court acquitted Berktay along with other columnists of “propagandizing for a terrorist organization.”
Case history
Ayşe Berktay is a translator, scholar, author, and cultural and women’s rights activist. Her publications include History and Society: New Perspectives, 2008, and The Ottoman Empire and the World Around with Suraiya Faroqhi; and she is the editor of Women and Men in the 75th Year of the Turkish Republic. Her translations include The Imperial Harem: Gender and Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1520-1656 by Leslie Penn Pierce; and The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922 (New Approaches to European History) by Donald Quataert.
Berktay is the recipient of the 2013 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award.
Writings by Ayşe Berktay
Ayşe Berktay’s Acceptance Remarks
I Do Not Accept This Indictment
Ayşe Berktay’s Summary of Her Situation and Proposals: December 2011