Ahmet Altan

Ahmet Altan is a Turkish journalist and writer.

Altan was born in 1950 in Ankara, Turkey, into the family of the well-known journalist and writer Çetin Altan, and was the first of two sons. His brother Mehmet Altan is also a journalist, writer, and university professor of political economy.

Having worked as a journalist for more than twenty years, he served at all levels of the profession, from the night shift to editor-in-chief at various newspapers.

In addition to writing columns for several Turkish newspapers, including Hürriyet, Milliyet, and Radikal, Altan also produced news programs for television.

He was dismissed from Milliyet after writing a column on April 17, 1995, titled “Atakurt,” which presented an alternative history of Turkey as a Kurdish state (“Kurdie”), in which ethnic Turks are oppressed and forced to assimilate. For the same column, he received a suspended sentence of 1 year and 8 months in prison and was fined approximately $12,000.

In 2007, he became the founding editor-in-chief and leading columnist of the Turkish daily Taraf and remained in that position until his resignation in December 2012.

In September 2008, when Altan published the article “Oh, My Brother,” dedicated to the victims of the Armenian genocide, he was charged under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code for “denigrating Turkishness.” The legal action was initiated by the far-right Great Union Party.

Altan, together with some of his associates at Taraf, customarily carried firearms for self-defense.

On December 14, 2012, Ahmet Altan resigned as editor-in-chief of Taraf.

During the media purge in Turkey following the failed coup d’état in July 2016, Altan was arrested on September 23, 2016. He was accused of sending “subconscious messages” to encourage the planners of the attempted coup in Turkey.

On February 16, 2018, Ahmet, together with his brother Mehmet Altan, was sentenced to life imprisonment. While in prison, he wrote notes that he gave to his lawyers and published his memoirs, titled I