NASA SMD: Turkey Travel Restrictions Not Binding on Grantees

Description: NASA’s recent memo on COSPAR travel to Turkey is binding on NASA Civil Servants and NASA contractors, but not grantees (including cooperative agreements).

You may have seen the NASA memo stating that, based on State Department warnings, official travel by NASA civil servants and contractors will not be sponsored or processed by the Agency. Thus, no NASA civil servants or NASA contractors will be going to COSPAR. However, this prohibition does not bind those who would travel on grants from NASA or cooperative agreements with NASA. Here is the text from the email that was sent out by Dennis Mcsweeney, Acting Director of the Science Division in NASA’s Office of International and Interagency Relations in response to the question whether this applied to grants and coops:

“The NASA Administrator determined that NASA will not support travel for the 2016 COSPAR conference in Istanbul based on a Travel Warning issued by the Department of State that advises of increased threats from terrorist groups throughout the country, and which notes that foreign and U.S. visitors have been explicitly targeted by international and indigenous terrorist organizations. In particular, the Travel Warning restricts official U.S. Government travel to Turkey to “mission-critical” travel only.

While the memo is directed at NASA civil servants and contractors on official travel, NASA encourages NASA grantees and anyone else scheduled to travel to this conference to closely review and consider the State Department Travel Warning before determining whether to attend the conference.”

– Max Bernstein, SMD lead for research