Author Aslı Erdoğan, linguist Necmiye Alpay released

One of Turkey's most prominent contemporary novelists and an internationally prominent linguist who has also made widely praised translations of Western novels into Turkish were released on probation on Dec. 29 after being arrested on charges of "making terrorist propaganda" for daily Özgür Gündem, which was closed in August on terrorism charges.
Author Aslı Erdoğan and linguist Necmiye Alpay were among journalists and intellectuals tried in one of the cases into Özgür Gündem, a daily that was closed over its alleged links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Erdoğan has been held in jail for 132 days since her detention and Alpay has been held behind bars for 120 days.

"I will defend myself as if law exists," Erdoğan told the court before starting her defense, adding that her advisory committee membership in daily Özgür Gündem was "symbolic." 

"The advisory committee hasn't had a meeting in five years and hasn't taken one single decision," she also said. 

Saying that she was arrested for being a member of the advisory board of the daily, "which has no authority on the completely legal newspaper," Erdoğan added that no complaints were filed against her columns in the closed daily Radikal. 

"I'm a writer and the reason I exist is to tell. The only evidence shown to me for being a member of the terrorist organization is my name on the newspaper," she said. 

"It's another irony to try a writer for being a member of an organization who has loneliness in every line of her pieces." 

During her defense Erdoğan also said that basic law principles have been crushed with the indictment regarding her and the Özgür Gündem employees. 

"The most painful thing is that a writer, who wrote eight books in 26...