Lectures

The Struggle Against the Death Penalty: Achievements and Setbacks (Side event to the 60th session of the UN-Commission on Human Rights, 15 April 2004, Geneva, Switzerland)

Writer’s Retreat (Address to the Edinburgh International Book Festival, 27 August, 2015)

What are Journalists For? (Inaugural Mehmet Ali Birand Lecture, 3 May 2014, Palais de Suède, Istanbul, Turkey)

Literature is Mightier than Tyranny (Geschwister-Scholl Preis Acceptance Speech, 25 November 2019, Munich, Germany)

Ahmet Altan was awarded by the state government of Munich and the Bavarian Union of Book Publishers the prestigious Geschwister-Scholl-Preis in 2019 for his book “I Will Never See the World Again.” The author was still in prison at the time and his acceptance speech was read by Altan’s colleague Yasemin Çongar at an award ceremony in Munich. The full text of that speech can be read here in English, and here in its Turkish original. The German version of the speech (translated by Ute Birgi-Knellessen) was also published by Süddeutsche Zeitung and can be read here.