Turkey lifts foreign travel ban on charged novelist

Istanbul: A Turkish court on Thursday lifted a foreign travel ban imposed on one of the country’s leading contemporary novelists after she was put on trial on charges of supporting “terror” groups. The move by the Istanbul court will allow Asli Erdogan to travel abroad and receive prizes she had been unable to collect due to the ban. However she remains on trial on charges of “terror propaganda” for outlawed Kurdish groups, in a case denounced by freedom of expression groups. The next hearing is due on October 31, her lawyer Erdal Dogan said. Erdogan, 50, was arrested last summer and held for 132 days on terror propaganda charges during a probe into the now-closed Ozgur Gundem newspaper, which Ankara condemned as a mouthpiece for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). She was released in December but the charges were kept in place and the travel ban maintained until now. The travel ban of the prominent Turkish translator Necmiye Alpay, 70, who is on trial in the same case, was also lifted. Erdogan, speaking to journalists outside the Istanbul court, welcomed the travel ban lifting as a “positive step” but slammed the continuation of the case. “I have been writing for 18 years and no crime has been found in any of my writings,” she said. — AFP