Meral ŞIMŞEK

Throughout 2025, writer, poet, and Kurdish PEN member Meral Şimşek remained on trial in absentia, appealing against a 15-month prison sentence for ‘making propaganda for a terrorist organisation’, imposed by the Malatya 2nd High Criminal Court in, eastern Türkiye on 7 October 2021.  

Briefly detained in December 2020 and placed under a travel ban, in January 2021, Şimşek was charged with ‘membership of a terrorist organisation’ and ‘making propaganda for a terrorist organisation’. The indictment mentions Şimşek’s short story Arzela, featured in the anthology Kurdistan + 100, in which 12 contemporary Kurdish writers imagine a country they could call their own by the year 2046. Şimşek was found guilty of ‘making propaganda for terrorist organisation’ and sentenced to 15 months in prison. The court acquitted her of the charge of ‘membership of a terrorist organisation’ and lifted her travel ban. 

Following an unsuccessful attempt to flee to Greece in June 2021, she was forced to return and was detained for seven days. On 20 September 2022, a court in Ipsala found her guilty of ‘entering a restricted military area’ and sentenced her to one year and eight months in prison. Her appeal in this second trial was also ongoing as of 31 December 2025 (see Case Lists 2021-2025). 

Meral Şimşek, born in 1980, is the prize-winning author of three poetry books – Mülteci Düşler (Refugee Dreams), Ateşe Bulut Yağdıran (Clouds on Fire) and İncir Karası (Black Fig). Her novel Nar Lekesi (Pomegranate Stain), published in 2017, tells the story of Şimşek’s family and sheds light on the plight of Kurdish people in Türkiye in the 1990s. Her latest collection of short stories, Arzela, was published in April 2022. Some of her poems and stories have been translated into German, English and French. She currently resides in Germany and is a member of PEN Berlin.