Mehmed Uzun

Who was Mehmed Uzun?

Mehmed Uzun was a contemporary Zaza-Kurdish writer and novelist. He was born in Siverek, Şanlıurfa Province, Turkey.

Although the Kurdish language was outlawed in Turkey from 1920 to 1990, he started to write in his mother tongue. As a writer, he achieved a great deal towards shaping a modern Kurdish literary language and reviving the Kurdish tradition of storytelling. From 1977 to 2005 he lived in exile in Sweden as a political refugee. During his time in Scandinavia, he became a prolific writer, author of a dozen Kurdish language novels and essays, which have made him a founding member of modern Kurdish literature in Kurmanji dialect. In June 2005 he returned to Istanbul, Turkey. He was a member of the PEN club and the Swedish writers association.

On May 29, 2006, it was revealed that Uzun had been diagnosed with cancer. Following treatment at the Karolinska University Hospital of Stockholm, in Sweden he returned to Diyarbakir, Turkey, where he died, aged 54.