| Cigdem Akyol | |
| Birth Date: | 1978 |
| Birth Place: | Herne |
| Occupation: | Journalist |
| Nationality: | German |
| Alma Mater: | University of Cologne |
| Notable Works: | Ich wollte nie in die Türkei |
Cigdem Akyol (born October 1978 in Herne) is German journalist and author of Turkish-Kurdish ancestry.
Akyols parents moved from Turkey to Germany in 1973 and settled in the Ruhr region in Herne. Akyol grew up in Herne, where she attended the Haranni-Gymnasium (high school). After her graduation in 1998 she studied international law and Eastern European history at the University of Cologne. Then she moved to Berlin to attend a journalism school and began working as a journalist. From 2006 to 2014 she worked for Berlin-based national German newspaper Die Tageszeitung, for which she often reported from abroad. In 2014 she accepted a temporary position the Deutsche Presse-Agentur offered in Istanbul. After the completion of her term she remained in Istanbul working as a freelance journalist and book author.
In 2015 she published a book about Turkey in the 21st century, describing it as a conflicted split society and in 2016 she followed it up with an extensive biography of the Turkish politician and president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.[1] [2]
Since 2019 Akyol has been a staff writer at the Swiss weekly WOZ.[3]
Die Biografie. Herder, 2016,