Writer Aslı Erdoğan talked to the Swedish daily Dagsbladet regarding the increasing persecution in her country, the resistance to this and journalists and writers who, instead of meeting their responsibilities as intellectuals, prefer to gain career and personal benefit by currying favour with the government, and her hopes and concerns for the future.

In the interview with journalist Mustafa Can, Erdoğan said that a day before returning to Istanbul after an 18-month 'unwilling exile' in the town of Graz in Austria, the Gezi Park and Taksim protests had begun.

She added that she had hoped to find some peace after Graz, where racism and hostility to foreigners was widespread, but found herself caught up in the biggest protests in Turkey in modern times. She said:

“The only thing that has happened after all the incidents is that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has strengthened his authority. The economy is going at express speed, but in an environment where the media and artists are in a worse situation than Iran and China and a government minister can compare rational articles to terror bullets, what is the value of that?

Can said that Aslı Erdoğan had asked him: "Frankly, why have I come back?" in reference to the 46 Kurdish journalists on trial in the KCK trial, the biggest press trial in Turkey's history.

Writer Erdoğan reacted angrily to Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt writing an article in the Dagens Industri newspaper during PM Erdoğan’s visit to Sweden, under the heading: 'Turkey on the right road', saying to Can: "Does your Foreign Minister want to be the Foreign Minister of Turkey? If he had an ounce of shame in his body he wouldn't have described Turkey as a 'launch pad for trade and investment', while the country is going backwards."

“Since 2009 close to ten thousand politicians, jurists, academics, writers, human rights activists and political opponents have been arrested and thrown into prison on charges of terrorism. The AKP is trying to limit the right to abortion, criminalise infidelity and ban kissing in public. Fervent capitalism is forcing the most impoverished people into the outlying districts of cities. This urban planning based on political-economic interests is trying to turn the remaining parks in Istanbul into shopping temples in order to impress the outside world with its grandeur" After saying she had heard that children had disappeared without trace in Kurdistan in the 1990s and that young Kurdish girls had been raped, all of which had been ignored by the press, Erdoğan said that someone had to write about these things, adding: “I am physically affected when I see and hear of merciless injustices. It is painful. I try to soothe this pain by going into action. This is selfish behaviour to assuage my conscience."

46-year-old Aslı Erdoğan, who was formerly a physicist, is considered one of the most original writers in modern Turkish literature. Her work has been translated into many languages and she has won plaudits from readers and critics all over Europe for the enchanting poetic expression in her books, but in Turkey she has not attracted the same interest.

Erdoğan replied to Can's question about this, sighing: “What can I say? It hurts. If only a few writers and journalists would say 'Aslı has used shallow symbolism, strange composition and excessively poetic language in her latest book', but there is just silence. This is killing me as a writer."