Osman Okkan, born in 1947 in Ankara, spent his childhood and youth in Istanbul and came to Germany at the age of 17. At the University of Münster, he studied economics, sociology, and political science, earning a master’s degree. In the 1960s, he founded one of the first Turkish student and workers’ associations in Münster, composed of first-generation migrants, and became actively involved in German trade unions. In 1974, he assumed the role of Secretary General of the opposition Turkish “Committee for Peace and Freedom in Europe”, and from 1978 to 1980 he served in the same capacity for the Federation of Turkish Workers’ Associations in Germany (FIDEF).

Following the military coup in Turkey on September 12, 1980, he became editor-in-chief of “Türkei-Informationen”, one of the most important media outlets of the Turkish democratic opposition in Europe. He then worked for many years as a TV and radio journalist at WDR, serving as editor and presenter for WDR’s Turkish-language programs, “Köln Radyosu”, and directed numerous nationally and internationally award-winning documentary films. For the TV political magazine “Monitor”, led by Klaus Bednarz, he co-produced a report with Örsan Öymen on the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II, which attracted significant international attention. The Monitor editorial team received the Grimme Prize in 1985.

Okkan’s documentary “Yaşar Kemal – Between Poetry and Politics” won the Honorary Jury Prize at the LiteraVision competition in 1997. “Displaced for Peace” received the Öngören Prize for Democracy and Human Rights at the Turkey-Germany Film Festival in Nuremberg in 2004, and “Mordakte Hrant Dink” won the Golden Globe at the World Media Festival in 2010, as well as the Best International Documentary Film Award at the Cinema for Peace Festival.

As a cultural figure and human rights activist, since the 1990s he has been a pioneer in establishing civil society initiatives, including the KulturForum Türkei Deutschland, the Greek-Turkish Peace Initiative, and the Hrant Dink Forum in Cologne. As a cultural facilitator, he has also initiated numerous international encounters with renowned artists such as Salman Rushdie, Yaşar Kemal, Mikis Theodorakis, Zülfü Livaneli, Maria Farantouri, Günter Grass, Aziz Nesin, Günter Wallraff, Navid Kermani, and Orhan Pamuk. Osman Okkan is currently working on a new documentary about representatives of the first generation of Turkish migrants, including Yılmaz Karahasan, one of the pioneers of the Turkish community in the German trade union movement.