Murat Çelikkan is a Turkish human rights defender and journalist. He is founder of some human rights organizations in

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

: Human Rights Association, Amnesty International Turkey and Citizens Assembly and co-director of Hafıza Merkezi (Truth Justice Memory Center) He was awarded the ''Civil Rights Defender of the Year Award 2018'', by

Civil Rights Defenders Civil Rights Defenders (Formerly the Swedish Helsinki Committee) is an international non-governmental organisation based in Stockholm, Sweden that does human rights work with a focus on civil and political rights. They primarily work to support lo ...

Education and work

Murat Çelikkan graduated from

Middle East Technical University Middle East Technical University (commonly referred to as METU; in Turkish language, Turkish, ''Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi'', ODTÜ) is a public university, public Institute of technology, technical university located in Ankara, Turkey. The ...

. He is a recent alumnus of the Columbia University Institute for the Study of Human Rights Alliance for Historical Dialogue and Accountability Program. He took part in ''Editors in Chief on Watch'' campaign for the newspaper

Özgür Gündem ''Özgür Gündem'' ( Turkish for "Free Agenda") was an Istanbul-based daily Turkish language newspaper, mainly read by Kurds. Launched in May 1992, the newspaper was known for its extensive reporting on the Kurdish-Turkish conflict, and was reg ...

. For this he was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment in 2017.

References

* Turkish human rights activists Turkish journalists {{Turkey-bio-stub