Alev Alatlı (born 1944 in Menemen) is a Turkish columnist and bestselling novelist. Early years She was born 1944 in the town of Menemen in western Turkey to an officer's family. She spent her childhood in Japan, where her father was appointed as the Military attaché in the Embassy of Turkey and also as the Liaison officer of the Turkish Brigade in Korea to the United Nations. Alev Alatlı attended the American School in Japan in Nakameguro, Meguro, Tokyo. After finishing high school there, her family returned to Turkey, and Alev studied economics at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, from where she graduated in 1963 with a Bachelor of Science degree. Following graduation, she married her classmate Alper Orhon, a Turkish Cypriot. She was granted a Fulbright Scholarship and her husband a scholarship from the Ford Foundation to conduct postgraduate study in the USA. Educated at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, she earned a Master of Arts in Development Economics and Econometrics. By this time, she had started to think about the importance of formulas and figures in explaining the world, and decided to pursue studies in philosophy. Although she enrolled at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire for doctoral studies on philosophy of religion and philosophy of history she doesn't have a Ph.D. degree. In 1974, Alatlı returned to Turkey. She jobbed a while as a lecturer at Istanbul University and later at the State Planning Organization (DPT) in Ankara in her capacity as an economist. In the next five years after her return from the US, Alev Alatlı spent her time mainly in studying Islam. She was also involved in a psycholinguistic project of the University of California, Berkeley on language learning patterns of Turkish children. She published a magazine titled "Bizim İngilizce" ) in co-operation with the newspaper Cumhuriyet for Turks based on native tongue and culture. Career In 1982, she quit her other activities to stay at home and to devote herself to writing. Her first book titled "Aydın Despotizmi..." (Despotism of the Intellectuals...) was a philosophical study. Alatlı's next work and first novel "Yaseminler Tüter mi Hala?" (Jasmines Smells No More!) appeared in 1985. It was inspired by the true story of a Greek Cypriot woman. Born and christened at the Apostolos Andreas Monastery on the Karpas Peninsula of Cyprus, she dies in a tragic manner at 32 in Piraeus, Greece, after two marriages