taking leave
Writer Dogan Akhanli has died
Dogan Akhanli died after a short, serious illness. Photo: Oliver Berg / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
The writer Dogan Akhanli is dead. He died after a short, serious illness on Sunday in Berlin, as the spokesman for the German PEN center confirmed. Akhanli had lived in Cologne for a long time and recently lived in Berlin. He is to be buried in Cologne.
The writer Dogan Akhanli is dead. He died after a short, serious illness on Sunday in Berlin, as the spokesman for the German PEN center confirmed. Akhanli had lived in Cologne for a long time and recently lived in Berlin. He is to be buried in Cologne.
“As president, I mourn the member of the German PEN, as a reader I mourn a great writer, as a companion I mourn an advocate for human rights, peace and coming to terms with the crimes against the Armenians,” wrote the incumbent German PEN president, journalist and writer Deniz Yücel.
Akhanli was born in Turkey in 1957 and has lived as a writer in Cologne since 1992. He had previously been arrested several times in Turkey and had been in the Istanbul military prison for two and a half years from 1985. In 2017 he was arrested while on vacation in Spain because the Turkish state had searched him with an international arrest warrant. Akhanli was able to return to Germany after two months.