Erol Güney

Erol Güney was a Turkish-Israeli journalist, translator and writer known for translating Western classics into Turkish in the 1940s.

1914 to 2009Translating Western classics into TurkishDeportation from TurkeyYedioth Ahronoth Washington correspondent

Born: 29 August 1914, Odesa
Died: 12 October 2009, Tel Aviv
Occupation: journalist, translator, writer
Education: St. Joseph High School, Istanbul University

Erol Güney was born in 1914 in Odesa

Erol Güney was born Misha Rottenberg in Odesa on 29 August 1914, to a Ukrainian Jewish family. His family moved to Turkey after the October Revolution in 1917.

He finished St. Joseph High School and studied philosophy at Istanbul University. In those years he became a Turkish citizen and took the name Erol Güney.

In the 1940s he joined a translation bureau led by Education Minister Hasan Âli Yücel and Sabahattin Ali. He knew Turkish, Russian, English and French, and translated works such as Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and Gogol's The Government Inspector. He later left the bureau for journalism and worked for Agence France-Presse.

In 1955 he was exiled to Yozgat over an article about the Soviet Union. His citizenship was later revoked and he was deported to France. In 1956 he moved to Israel and settled in Tel Aviv.

In Israel he kept working as a journalist, wrote for the Istanbul Jewish paper Şalom, and in the 1980s was Yedioth Ahronoth's Washington correspondent. He was barred from Turkey until 1990. He was married to Dora Güney and died in Tel Aviv in 2009.