Gülten Akın

Who is Gülten Akın?

Gülten Akın is a Turkish poet. Her poetry is considered culturally significant to Turkey.

She was born in 1933 in Yozgat, Turkey. She attended Beşiktaş Atatürk Anatolian High School and graduated from Ankara University Law School in 1955. She married her husband Yaşar Cankoçak in 1956, with whom she had five children. Because of her husband's position as the governor of various provincial districts in Turkey, she moved around several provinces of Turkey, working as a lawyer, assistant lawyer, and teacher in many of them. In 1972, Akın and her family settled in Ankara, where she worked at the Turkish Language Association, the regulatory body of the Turkish language, and became a member of the Editorial Team at the Ministry of Culture. She worked for the reestablishment of free and democratic non-governmental organizations. She served as a founder and/or manager at several such Turkish organizations, such as the Human Rights Association, Halkevleri, and the Language Association.

Akın's first published poem appeared in the newspaper Son Haber in 1951. She subsequently appeared in several magazines, such as Hisar, Varlık, Yeditepe, Turk Dili, and Mülkiye. While her early poems were about nature, love, separation, and yearning, her later poems were dominated by social issues.