By: Hambersom Aghbashian
Adalet Ağaoğlu ( born on Oct. 23,1923, in Ankara, Turkey), is a Turkish novelist, playwright and human rights activist. After graduation from the French Language and Literature 
Department of The Ankara University, she started her long career as a dramaturge for the Turkish national radio and television.(1)
She became one of the most prized novelists of Turkey and is considered to be one of the most important living authors in Turkey and a revered intellectual. Her tightly constructed prose is a balance between a realistic milieu of Turkey which she knows firsthand , and the broader, more humanistic elements of social pressure and gender prejudice. Some of her Theatre and Radio dramas’ are , Yaşamak (1955), Evcilik Oyunu (1964), Tombala (1967), Sınırlarda Aşk-Kış-Barış (1970), Kendini Yazan Şarkı (1976) and Duvar Öyküsü (1992),etc.. Her novels are Ölmeye Yatmak (1973) , Fikrimin İnce Gülü (1976), Yazsonu (1980), Hayır (1987), Ruh Üşümesi (1991), Romantik Bir Viyana Yazı (1993) and more. She has been rewarded with numerous honors besides the literary awards she won in the fields of novel, short story and drama. For her perception of subtle and overt changes in modern Turkish society and her writing entitled “Modernism and Social Change”, Adalet Ağaoğlu received the “Turkish Presidency Merit Award” in 1995. In 1998, Ağaoğlu received “Honorary Ph.D.” from Anadolu University followed by the “Ph.D. of Humane Letters” from the Ohio State University.(2)
Adalet Ağaoğlu is one of the Notable signatories of The “I Apologize Campaign” which was launched in December 2008 in Turkey by numerous journalists, writers, politicians, and professors that called for an apology for what they considered as the “Great Catastrophe that Ottoman Armenians were subjected to in 1915″. (3)
According to The New York Times, Orhan Pamuk’s Nobel literature prize drew mixed reactions in Turkey. Fellow novelists, poets and publishers were among the first to congratulate Pamuk and novelist Adalet Agaoglu called it a “historic moment” , although nationalists who regard the novelist as a traitor for remarks on the World War I-era of killings of Armenians during the Ottoman Empire , accused the Swedish Academy of rewarding the author because he had belittled Turks.(4)
An estimated forty thousand people commemorated slain Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink with a walk from Taksim to the Agos newspaper in Şişli where the editor-in-chief of the Armenian weekly was gunned down on 19 January 2007. Many people left flowers in front of the Agos building were the commemoration ceremony was held. One of the people leaving flowers was writer Adalet Ağaoğlu. She kissed the red carnation in her hand and left it at the place Dink was shot and died.(5)
According to Bawer Çakir ( Bia news center , Istanbul -17-12-2008), “The Prime Minister criticized those who campaigned to apologize to the Armenians about the Great Catastrophe of 1915 by describing the whole thing as irrational.” Adalet Ağaoğlu reacted to the Prime Minister’s words saying “The Prime Minister should not discuss this, but the mentality that killed Hrant Dink”. She added “What is expressed here is our shame. Erdoğan should tell us why Hrant Dink was killed, instead of this.” She added “Racism and Turkism still continue.” Since Dink was killed for the same reason and while everyone was aware about the murder plan, these are not the sentences to be uttered. The campaign is the expression of the shame we feel about the mentality that has been alive since the Ottomans.”(6)
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1-http://www.turkishculture.org/literature/literature/turkish-authors/-247.htm?type=1
2-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adalet_A%C4%9Fao%C4%9Flu
3- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Apologize_campaign
4-http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/12/arts/12iht-web.1013pamukmix.3137789.html?_r=0
5- http://www.norzartonk.org/en/?p=94
6- https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Barev_class_of_77/conversations/topics/1109
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