ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - An Istanbul-based publishing house who has long been subject to government censorship and harassment over its promotion of Kurdish culture is being honored with an award for its unyielding commitment to free speech, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) announced Wednesday.
Avesta Publishing House was this year’s winner of the trade association’s International Freedom to Publish Award, conferred to a non-US publisher for “courage and fortitude in defending freedom of expression.”
“We are moved to celebrate Avesta’s brave, decades-long struggle because it underscores an essential fact: the battle for free expression is central to freedom more generally but is never truly won,” AAP President and CEO Maria A. Pallante said in a statement.
Avesta was a previous recipient of the award in 2005.
“AAP first recognized Avesta’s extraordinary contributions a little over 20 years ago and despite continuous threats and intimidation since that time their commitment to publishing has only grown stronger,” she stated.
Published in 1995 in Istanbul, Avesta - under the banner “in the footsteps of lost cultures” - began with four literary works in Kurdish with the mission of amplifying marginalized, neglected and sensitive issues and has published research primarily on Kurds, Assyrian-Syriac, Chaldean, Armenian, Yazidi, Alevi, Persian and Arab societies.
Avesta boasts the publications of 900 books in 50 series mainly in Kurdish and Turkish, as well as in English and French.
Avesta’s Mespotamain Culture series features works by writers on classical and contemporary Kurdish literature as a way of showcasing authors “who are pillars of Kurdish culture and literature.”
Kurds, comprising Turkey's largest ethnic minority group, have long battled with the government over rights relating to the broader use of Kurdish language in education and public services.
In 2016, its warehouse in the Kurdish city of Sur, Diyarbakir (Amed), was burned down, resulting in more than 3,000 publications being burned or damaged. Undeterred, Avesta opened its bookstore in Amed the same year.
Between 1996 to 2007 Avesta was subject to a number of lawsuits by Turkish state courts seeking to curtail freedom of speech.
Similarly, from 2018 and 2024, Avesta was subject to various bans and confiscation orders under Turkey’s anti-Terrorism Law for 20 previously published books alleging prohibited political content - a shadow claim regularly used to ban, seize, and recall books written in or translated into Kurdish, or texts detailing Kurdish history and culture.
Nevertheless, Avesta has been the recipient of the Freedom of Thought Award from the Turkish Publishers Union in 2019 and was nominated for the Voltaire Prize from the International Publishers Union in 2020.
