Literaturk
Literaturk is a German-Turkish literature festival that has been held annually in Essen since 2005 with the participation of German, Turkish and German-Turkish authors . The event is organized by the Kulturzentrum Grend e. V. in collaboration with Semra Uzun-Önder and Filz Doğan. In 2014, an advisory board was appointed under the leadership of the Turkish political scientist Tanıl Bora and Andreas Goldberg, the managing director of the Foundation for Turkish Studies and Integration Research . For the advisory board u. a. Imre Török , Christian Scholze , Can Dündar and Sibel Oral .
idea
According to the initiative of the federal and state governments "Reading in Germany", Literaturk should offer space for dialogues between the different population groups and in this way bring about integration from within. Using the example of the diversity of intercultural artistic forms of expression, it should be made clear that Germany is not threatened by immigrant cultures, but is productively enriched, according to the initiative.
prehistory
Research into cultural offerings in the city of Essen revealed a lack of high quality cultural offers for the second and third generation of immigrants and insufficient knowledge of Turkish and German-Turkish cultural products in these generations, but also in the German majority society. The festival would like to counter these deficits by offering a forum for German-Turkish authors and cultural products.
