And has a new novel out!
Award-winning author Hikmet Hükümenoğlu wrote his very first play, Fora, which premiered in IKSV Theater Festival in November 2025. Hükümenoğlu’s interest in theater harks back to his RC days. He wrote and directed his first play for the Turkish Drama Club in his senior year: “That’s when I really caught the bug,” he recalls, “or as we say in Turkish, sahne tozu.”
After writing fiction, what motivated him to turn to playwriting was his long-standing love for the medium: “I’ve always loved theatre and wanted to explore its unique ability to connect directly with an audience. As for the subject matter of Fora—dysfunctional families have more or less become my niche by now. It still feels endlessly rich and relevant to me.”
The play’s premiere at İKSV Theater Festival was attended by a large group of RC alumni, and Hükümenoğlu describes the event as one of the most exciting ones of his life: “It was a great honor. As a teenager, I used to wait in ticket queues for hours just to attend the festival, so being part of it now felt both surreal and deeply meaningful.”
2025 brought another excitement into Hükümenoğlu’s life: Hükümenoğlu’s first procedural crime novel, Sonra Gözler Görür, (Eyes See Later, İthaki Yayınları), had created quite a stir, and it was adapted into a series to be streamed on Netflix. Hükümenoğlu says the possibility of the novel turning into a series had crossed his mind, as he was writing it: “I certainly wasn’t expecting it to happen so quickly. My main focus was writing an engaging and compelling procedural novel. The series feels like the icing on the cake.”
A frequent guest of the RC Turkish Literature Department, Hükümenoğlu says he is always struck by RC students’ self-confidence, maturity, and intelligence: “Even the students nodding off in the back rows somehow look like they’re deeply engaged with what I’m saying—which I choose to take as a compliment.” With his latest novel, Bu Dünyada Yaşamak (Living in This World), released in January 2026 , there are plenty of reasons for the author to visit the campus once again.
