2019 World Fellow Burçak Belli
Burçak Belli describes growing up in an Arab community in Turkey, why she became a journalist, covering the war in Syria, and the challenges facing journalists.
Burçak Belli describes growing up in an Arab community in Turkey, why she became a journalist, covering the war in Syria, and the challenges facing journalists.
Onur "Burçak" Belli is a Syrian-Turkish journalist. For most of her career, Burçak has focused on conflicts in Turkey, where she has been based for the past five years, working for Die Zeit, a German weekly newspaper, covering conflicts and crises in Turkey and the broader region. With 13 years of experience writing for international media outlets, her reporting is often through a lens of comprehensive rights and freedoms, writing in feature, long-form, or non-fiction storytelling styles. In 2010, Burçak was based in Damascus covering Syria’s reform plans and the Sunni-Alawite divergences amongst the ruling elite. She then moved London, working for the BBC as a broadcast journalist, before returning…