Aras Onur

Aras Onur (born 23 April 1982) is a Turkish author, poet, and columnist.

Early life
Aras Onur was born in Ankara and is a graduate of TED Ankara College and University of Ankara. He started his literary career in the early 2000s. Openly gay, he has been often associated with local LGBT literature.

He is often identified as a socialist columnist in the media, although his conservative tendencies are also often noted.

Aras Onur was pointed as mastermind of "Kindle a Candle" protests, a wave of civil series of unrest in Turkey began on 11 September 2015. The protesters were led by a common manifest released by columnists of a national newspaper named Karsi, in which the slogan "Kindle a Candle, Stand Out" was captioned.

Career
His first book of poetry was published in 2004, called Sudan Masallar, integrating a wordplay in Turkish which could be construed either as "tales from the water" or "arbitrary tales". His synopsis text for a short film (Gıyabında Cam Kadeh) ("The Wineglass in absentia" in English) was awarded the second place by Istanbul Bilgi University in 2007. During the same year one of his plays, Üç Kapı (Eng: "Three Doors"), made its theatrical debut. He was listed as one of the contemporary Turkish poets awaiting translation, among Cemal Sureya, Birhan Keskin, Turgut Uyar, and Edip Cansever.

He had written for Karsi columns for two years as the acting-editor until he resigned from office in October 2016, following to ban of accessing to paper's website.