Cigdem Akyol (born October 1978) is a German journalist and author of Turkish-Kurdish ancestry.
Biography Akyols parents moved from Turkey to Germany in 1973 and settled in the Ruhr region in Herne. Akyol grew up in Herne, where she attended the Haranni-Gymnasium (high school). After her graduation in 1998 she studied international law and Eastern European history at the University of Cologne. Then she moved to Berlin to attend a journalism school and began working as a journalist. From 2006 to 2014, she worked for Berlin-based national German newspaper Die Tageszeitung, for which she often reported from abroad. In 2014, she accepted a temporary position the Deutsche Presse-Agentur offered in Istanbul. After the completion of her term she remained in Istanbul working as a freelance journalist and book author.
In 2015, she published a book about Turkey in the 21st century, describing it as a conflicted split society and in 2016 she followed it up with an extensive biography of the Turkish politician and president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan."Ich wollte nie in die Türkei" - biography at lokalkompass.de (German, retrieved 30 May 2016, archived version)Cigdem Akyol at Perlentaucher (German, retrieved 30 May 2016)
Since 2019, Akyol has been a staff writer at the Swiss weekly WOZ.
In 2024, Akyol published her first novel about a family of Turkish immigrants in Germany.
Books Generation Erdogan. Die Türkei – ein zerrissenes Land im 21. Jahrhundert. Kremayr & Scheriau, 2015, Erdogan: Die Biografie. Herder, 2016, Die gespaltene Republik. Die Türkei von Atatürk bis Erdoğan, S. Fischer 2023, Frankfurt a. M. April 2023, Geliebte Mutter – Canım Annem. Steidl, 2024, (novel)
References
External links Official website Autorin im Porträt: Cigdem Akyol - biographical portrait at kremayr-scheriau.at (German) "Ich wollte nie in die Türkei" - biography at lokalkompass.de (German, archived version) Cigdem Akyol at Perlentaucher (German) Cigdem Akyol - Die Erdogan-Biografin - interview broadcast by ARD (German)