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I was born in Istanbul on 18 April 1944, the fourth child — after Sumru, Olcay and Acar — of Sabiha and Ahmet Alpay, a family from Ayvalık. Under the compulsory population exchange agreed between Turkey and Greece in 1923, my father came to Ayvalık from Serres and my mother’s family from Lesbos.
I attended primary school at Nilüfer Hatun Primary School in Nişantaşı, Istanbul (1950–55), middle school at the English High School for Boys in Nişantaşı (1955–60), and high school at Robert Academy in Bebek (1960–63). I spent third grade at Ayvalık Cumhuriyet Primary School (1952–53). In my second year of high school, on an American Field Service (AFS) scholarship, I went to the United States and completed my final year (1961–62) at the Webb School of California, a private school, earning an American high school diploma.
I won a four-year scholarship to study at Columbia University in New York, but chose not to use it. I completed my higher education between 1963 and 1967 at the Faculty of Political Sciences (SBF) of Ankara University. In 1965 I married my sweetheart, Fatma Nur Kaptan (a student at the Faculty of Letters, Istanbul University), a neighbor’s daughter from Ayvalık; our daughter Elvan was born in 1968 and our son Acar in 1978. I have two grandchildren, Defne through Elvan and Leyla through Acar.
While a student at SBF I joined the revolutionary youth movement. My writing appeared in journals such as Dönüşüm, Forum, Aydınlık, İşçi-Köylü and Türk Solu. Between 1968 and 1971 I worked as a teaching assistant in constitutional law at the Faculty of Education of Ankara University. After the 12 March 1971 military intervention, when martial law authorities sought my arrest, I joined the Revolutionary Workers and Peasants’ Party of Turkey (TİİKP), led by Doğu Perinçek, and received guerrilla training in the camps of the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, led by Nayef Hawatmeh, in Syria and Lebanon; it was during this period that I ended my ties with the TİİKP.
In 1972 I obtained political asylum in Sweden, and between 1974 and 1981 I completed a doctorate in the Department of Political Science at Stockholm University, with a thesis titled “Turks in Stockholm: A Social and Political Study of Immigrants.” On returning to Turkey, I worked as an editor and columnist at Cumhuriyet (1982–91), Sabah (1993–94) and Milliyet (1994–2001). Between 1992 and 1993 I served as Secretary-General of TÜSES, and in 1993 as a parliamentary group adviser to the Republican People’s Party. Following an invitation in the winter of 1998, I taught courses on Turkish political life as a visiting faculty member at Princeton University in the United States. Between 1999 and 2002 I hosted a weekly interview program called “An Intellectual’s View” on the CNN-Türk television channel.
Between 2001 and 2015 I taught courses on Turkish political life and comparative politics in the Department of Political Science at Bahçeşehir University. I wrote columns for Zaman between 2002 and 2016, and for Today’s Zaman between 2007 and 2016. Between 2006 and 2016 I was one of the commentators on the program “Notebook of the Mind” on Mehtap TV.
Although I had opposed military coups throughout my career as a writer, following the coup attempt of 15 July 2016 I was arrested on the charge of “membership in the FETÖ/PDY terrorist organization” and imprisoned in Silivri Prison until my release on 17 March 2018. At the conclusion of the trial, in 2022 I was sentenced to 2 years and 6 months in prison on the finding that, while not a member, I had “aided a terrorist organization.” My case is currently awaiting the outcome of my appeal before the Court of Cassation.
My beloved wife, Fatma Nur Alpay, passed away on 6 October 2018. I have written about our life together in the books Bir Hikayem Var (Lejand, 2024) and Hikayemin Sonu (Lejand, 2025).