Sennur Sezer Awards Announced: No Prize Given in Short Story Category Due to AI Concerns
The Sennur Sezer Labor-Resistance Poetry and Short Story Awards, organized for the 11th time this year by the Gıda-İş Union and Manos Kitap in memory of the poet Sennur Sezer, who passed away in 2015, have announced their results. In a competition that evaluated a total of 51 poetry and 34 short story submissions, the poetry award went to Özcan Öztürk, while the short story category saw a notable decision tied to artificial intelligence: the jury chose not to award any work in this category this year.
The Short Story Selection Committee, composed of Adnan Özyalçıner, Ayşegül Tözeren, Gaye Boralıoğlu, Eylem Ata, and Sibel Öz, unanimously decided not to give an award for 2026 following their evaluation. The decision was attributed to strong indications of AI-assisted text generation found in the submitted works, which made it difficult to assess their originality. The jury also stated that, by common agreement, they were unable to identify any work they considered worthy of the prize.
The development stands as one of several recent examples showing that literary awards are also grappling with questions of originality verification amid the growing use of generative AI tools. Similar debates have recently emerged across various literary and academic circles, with juries and editors finding it increasingly complex to determine whether texts were produced by human authors or with AI assistance.