The journalist and writer Deniz Yücel is the new President of the PEN Center Germany. The publicist was elected on Tuesday evening at the general meeting in Frankfurt’s Paulskirche, as a spokesman for the authors’ association announced. Yücel, author of the world, was born in Flörsheim in Hesse and studied at the Free University of Berlin. He was detained in Turkey for a long time for allegedly supporting a terrorist organization.
The previous president, Regula Venske, did not run. She held the highest office of the writers’ association in Germany since April 2017. PEN stands for Poets, Essayists, Novelists. The PEN Center Germany, based in Darmstadt, advocates freedom of speech, but is also committed to imprisoned authors and those in exile. It is a member of PEN International, which unites over 150 writers’ organizations from more than 100 nations.
In his application speech for the office of PEN President, Yücel said according to the worldIn Germany, the threat to freedom “comes not only from the enemies of the open society, not only from right-wing extremists and Islamists, but sometimes also from people who act in the name of noble goals.”