İsmail Beşikçi
İsmail Beşikçi (b. 1939, İskilip) is a Turkish sociologist and independent researcher and writer. He completed his primary and secondary education in İskilip and his high school studies in Çorum.
Education and Academic Career
Beşikçi graduated from Ankara University’s Faculty of Political Sciences in 1962. In the mid-1960s he became an assistant in the Sociology Department of the Faculty of Letters at Atatürk University in Erzurum, completing his doctoral thesis in 1967. The thesis examined the social, economic and ethnic structure of Eastern Anatolia; an expanded version was published in 1969 as Doğu Anadolu’nun Düzeni: Sosyo-Ekonomik ve Etnik Temeller (The Order of Eastern Anatolia: Socio-Economic and Ethnic Foundations). Following an investigation prompted by the book, he was dismissed from his university post in 1970. He did not return to a salaried academic position afterward, continuing his work as an independent researcher and writer.
Works
Beşikçi’s major works include Doğu Anadolu’nun Düzeni: Sosyo-Ekonomik ve Etnik Temeller (1969), Kürtlerin Mecburi İskânı (Forced Settlement of the Kurds, 1977) and Kürdistan Uluslararası Sömürge (International Colony Kurdistan, 1991). Of his 36 published books, 32 are reported to have been banned in Turkey at various points; his works have been translated into German, French, Spanish, Arabic, Persian, Kurdish and Japanese, among other languages.
Legal History
Beşikçi was tried in Turkey multiple times over his publications and, across separate periods (1971-1974, 1979-1987, and the 1990s), spent a total of approximately 17 years in prison. He was arrested in 1971 and released under a general amnesty in 1974, and was subsequently arrested and tried again in later years.
Recognition
An honorary member of International PEN, Beşikçi received the International Hrant Dink Award in 2012 and was awarded an honorary doctorate by Boğaziçi University in 2013.
For more on the district where he was born, see the İskilip district page; for other notable figures from Çorum, see the History and People topic page.