After studying at Beşiktaş Girls' High School, she worked for a short period at the Istanbul Telephone Directorate. Her first book, "Sevgili Arsız Ölüm," was published in 1983. With this debut novel, in which she narrated village life and its people in a fairy-tale-like atmosphere reminiscent of "One Hundred Years of Solitude," she gained great fame. Following that, her other novels came one after another. Her works have been translated into English, German, French, Italian, Persian, and Dutch.