Ümmiye Koçak

Ümmiye Koçak — Biography

Ümmiye Koçak was born on 1 March 1957 in the village of Çelemli in Adana Province, one of ten children. She finished only primary school in her village but educated herself through reading. After marrying in 1982 she settled in Arslanköy, a mountain village in the Toros range near Mersin, where she raised three children.

To draw attention to the lives of rural women, she founded the Arslanköy Women's Theatre Group in 2001; its first production was Remzi Özçelik's Taş Bademleri, followed by her own story-based play Kadının Feryadı. In 2006 the group's play Hasret Çiçekleri was staged at the Sabancı International Theatre Festival in Adana, and over the years Koçak went on to write further plays and short stories.

Using money earned from farm work, she wrote and directed Yün Bebek, a film about violence against village women; it premiered at the 49th Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival and won the award for best Eurasian female artist in cinema at the New York Eurasian Film Festival. In 2017 she directed a Türk Telekom commercial featuring Cristiano Ronaldo, and that same year her story was included in the Ministry of National Education's fifth-grade social studies textbook. She has also appeared in television series including Kasaba, Seher Vakti, Hanımın Çiftliği, Hayat Devam Ediyor and Ateş Kuşları, and has received numerous theatre and arts awards for her work.