Asli Erdogan: 'Human beings deserve human rights'

Asli Erdogan is a novelist and human rights activist who was arrested in August 2016 over the columns she wrote for the pro-Kurdish newspaper Ozgur Gundem. She is the author of such novels as The City in Crimson Cloak and The Stone Building and Other Places. Erdogan was detained for 4 1/2 months in a women's prison in Istanbul and was later released for health reasons. She now lives in exile in Germany and continues to speak out about the situation regarding free expression in Turkey.

Her contribution is part of Deutsche Welle's#Article19ForAll project. The goal is to collect voices and opinions to mark the 70th anniversary of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and more specifically Article 19, which defines free expression and access to information as basic human rights.