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Turkish dissidents attacked abroad

Outspoken Kurdish-German soccer player Deniz Naki was the victim of an armed attack in his car in Germany on Jan. 7. Naki was unharmed in the attack, which was not his first. He has been verbally and physically harassed multiple times by Turkish ultra-nationalists. Naki has a tattoo that reads “azadi,” “freedom” in Kurdish, and is not shy about showing his support on social media for Kurdish forces fighting the Islamic State or for the two academics who are on hunger strike demanding their jobs back. On his other arm Naki has a tattoo of his parents’ hometown of Dersim, which has a Kurdish-Alevi majority. In 2017 Naki was prosecuted for his social media posts allegedly in support of terrorism. He was given a suspended jail sentence.

The shots fired at Naki on a German freeway came just two weeks after People’s Democratic Party lawmaker Garo Paylan told the press he has been informed by Western officials that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) keep a list of dissenters to target. Several comments were shared on social media asking if this was the first of a series of assassinations. After the attack Paylan said, “The German and Turkish governments need to work together to take precautions against possible hate crimes.” It is not yet known who was behind the assault against Naki, but the German press reported that groups associated with the ultra-nationalists referred to as “Turan” or “Grey Wolves” have continued threatening Naki on social media since the attack. The pro-government Sabah Daily’s Europe edition ran a piece claiming the attack was a farce orchestrated by Paylan and that no one took Naki’s account seriously.

Al-Monitor surveyed a diverse group of Turkish dissidents who live in Europe and the United States and asked if they have observed any changes in the tone and intensity of harassment.

Amed Dicle, an occasional Al-Monitor contributor, is a Kurdish journalist who has dual citizenship and lives in Europe. He said, “I travel comfortably in Iraq and Syria, but not in Europe. Last week, I was told by officers [in the EU] to be careful. Particularly they warned me not to travel alone and to avoid trains. We are also cautioned not to travel to Germany frequently. It is not just me — a few other friends received similar warnings.”

A group of young Kurdish and Alevi college students in Berlin who hold Turkish passports concurred with Dicle. One of these students told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, “We call them Nazi Ottomans. They are the unemployed, disenfranchised Turkish youths. Most of them do not even speak Turkish properly but they try their best to intimidate us. We believe they are getting paid by mainland Turks.” Their alleged photos have circulated on social media as well.

Barbaros Sansal, a prominent fashion designer and political activist who has suffered physical attacks and recently served jail time in Turkey for his outspoken criticism of the government, told Al-Monitor, “On July 15, 2017, at an Italian restaurant on Grote Markt in Brussels, I was having dinner with a politician and Belgian activist friend. Four thugs with Turkish flags came to the plaza and started harassing us with slurs and threats. We tried to prevent the restaurant owner from calling the police, because we did not want to complain about fellow Turks. But other diners were disturbed. The police came and took them into custody and I could go home only with a police escort. In September 2017, at Gent, Belgium, while I was having dinner, the thugs had made a plan to attack the restaurant but police intelligence stopped them. I again had to travel back with police escort. In November 2017, at the Berlin airport, a Turkish passenger tried to charge at me and my two female friends and police intervened. They leave threatening messages on my phones regularly. Dissidents in Europe are under surveillance and attack by teams commanded from Ankara.”

Arzu Yildiz is a journalist who decided to live abroad after being stripped of parental rights for her criticism of government policies. Yildiz left behind a toddler and a newborn baby. She told Al-Monitor, “No one who challenges the Turkish government is safe today. You are not safe if you are abroad, either. People are kidnapped from the streets even abroad, boarded on private planes and taken to Turkey. Embassies, consulates or even mosques have become entities to keep track of Turks abroad. Take the attack by Erdogan’s bodyguards in Washington, DC, for example. Yes, some of those who threw the punches were arrested, but how about those who gave the order?”

Aykan Erdemir is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. He is a former lawmaker for the Republican People’s Party and in November, Turkish prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for him over mind-boggling allegations of supplying falsified documents to a New York court. He said, “Over the years, harassment and insults from pro-AKP social media accounts have evolved into threats of physical violence or death. Recently, one such account even went as far as to threaten to decapitate me. The intimidation campaign on social media goes alongside, and in an eerily coordinated manner, with the smear pieces in the pro-AKP news outlets. Meanwhile, I have observed that many of my dissident friends have made their social media accounts private or simply deleted them. This is an unfortunate indicator that intimidation and threats deliver results in Erdogan’s Turkey.”

Al-Monitor asked Fuad Kavur, a film director and producer who has lived in England since 1963, about how the challenges are different now from in 1980s, when Turkey experienced a military coup and several political dissidents had sought refuge in Europe. Kavur was denied permission to shoot his movie, “Memed My Hawk,” in 1980s Turkey. The movie was banned and censors made sure there was no Turkish news published about its international achievements. In 2018, things have changed, but not by much. Kavur said, “We will shoot the movie ‘Ataturk’ in Hungary. It has been an exceptionally long haul marked by not-so-discreet ‘interest’ by Ankara. Moreover, a week ago, I was horrified to read in Hurriyet Daily News about a pro-government Turkish journalist openly advocating for Turkey’s intelligence service to bump off a few dissidents.”

Al-Monitor posed the same question to Ayse Cavdar, an anthropologist and journalist who has been living in Germany for almost two years. She said, “Although our destination is the same, our stories differ significantly from those told by the previous generation. First, the conditions now are different. The problems are no longer generated by one agency. Today, all [Turkish] institutions have collapsed. They are corroded. And also, now it is a lot easier to get the news from Turkey. There is no need to wait for a letter or the newspaper to arrive. Now I can get news from each neighborhood or district daily.” Cavdar added that she is aware of the talk of Turkish nationalists in Germany hunting down dissidents. She said, “Those who will carry out the threats will be German citizens/denizens with Turkish heritage” in what she called a “contagious disease spreading from the wreckage of the Turkish institutional collapse.”

The punitive measures against dissidents have no limits. For example, Fatma Tunc, the wife of dissident writer Aziz Tunc, was recently forbidden from leaving the Istanbul airport. The authorities confiscated her passport and told her she has “dangerous family members.” Tunc’s son and husband live in Germany and she was on her way to visit them. Police told her, “Have your son and husband come back to Turkey.”

As Cavdar emphasized, political dissidents share one sentiment: Even if one lives in comfortable conditions in the free world, life can still be difficult when one feels a deep shame and sorrow for her homeland.

Beyond all these coordinated efforts to intimidate dissidents lies a paradox: Erdogan repeatedly tells his audiences that he does not care about the views of other countries or dissidents, whom he labels as traitors and liars. Why, then, this endless effort to silence them?

Pinar Tremblay is a columnist for Al-Monitor’s Turkey Pulse and a visiting scholar of political science at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

By Pete Baumgartner

When Afqan Muxtarli stepped out in downtown Tbilisi to buy some bread around dinnertime on May 29, he didn’t think the errand would take him some 600 kilometers away to a dank jail cell in Azerbaijan’s glimmering capital, Baku.

But Muxtarli — an Azerbaijani journalist who fled to Georgia with his family in 2015 after reportedly receiving threats while investigating alleged government corruption — never came home after speaking on the phone with his wife, Leyla Mustafayeva, just a few blocks from where they live with their 3-year-old daughter.

Worried when her husband failed to arrive or answer his phone, she reported Muxtarli missing and police began a search for him on May 30.

That same day, Azerbaijani officials announced he was in pretrial detention in Baku after being charged with trespassing, smuggling, and resisting police after trying to cross the border without a passport and with 10,000 euros ($11,300) in his pocket.

But Muxtarli — a fierce critic of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev — had a much different story to tell.

His lawyer in Azerbaijan, Elcin Sadiqov, said that Muxtarli told him that he had been accosted by four men on his way home in Tbilisi and forced into a car.

Muxtarli, who had once volunteered to be a bodyguard for RFE/RL investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova during her disputes with Azerbaijani authorities, said his abductors tied his hands, beat him, and put a hood over his head before driving toward Azerbaijan.

Muxtarli, 43, told Sadiqov that they changed cars twice before finally reaching the Laqadex-Balakan border crossing, where he was turned over to Azerbaijani officials who, he said, planted the euros on him and then promptly arrested him.

Sadiqov has been able to meet with Muxtarli only once since a court quickly ordered the journalist detained for 90 days as an investigation into his case continues.

Sadiqov said Muxtarli had bruises on his face and thinks he may have broken ribs due to the alleged beating he received from the unidentified men, three of whom he said were dressed as some kind of Georgian security officers.

At first the abductors spoke Georgian, Muxtarli said, but later those in the car were speaking in Azeri to people calling every 15-20 minutes asking for updates on the situation.

Georgian Outrage

Mustafayeva, Muxtarli’s wife, has dismissed the Azerbaijani version of her husband’s disappearance, adding that he never would have returned to Azerbaijan under the current conditions, knowing that he’d certainly be detained.

“We know the official version of the Azerbaijani side — that Mr. Muxtarli was trying to somehow sneak into Azerbaijan illegally, having left his passport at home,” Ghia Nodia, a Georgia analyst and professor of politics at Ilia State University in Tbilisi, tells RFE/RL. “But the credibility of that version is very low.”

Georgian civil activists, journalists, and ordinary citizens were outraged at the reports of Muxtarli’s delivery to Azerbaijan, with many suspecting the Georgian government’s knowledge if not connivance in the snatching.

“Most people assume Mr. Muxtarli was abducted, and if he was abducted then there are basically two possibilities,” Nodia says. “One that it was some kind of a [covert] deal between the Georgian government and the Azerbaijani government…or it was an Azerbaijani security service operation but supposedly they bribed some Georgian policemen — or maybe there is some kind of in-between: that the Azerbaijanis have hinted that we’ll take care of the business ourselves but you [Georgians] will kind of turn a blind eye to this.”

A group of Georgian journalists put black hoods over their heads and held up signs in support of Muxtarli in a protest in parliament on June 6, one of several demonstrations that have taken place since Muxtarli’s disappearance.

The “black-hood campaign” — in which people photograph themselves hooded or with signs in support of Muxtarli — spread quickly to Twitter and Facebook under the #freeAfgan hashtag.

On June 7, black-hooded journalists appeared unexpectedly on a Georgian TV show, prompting Deputy Interior Minister Shalva Khutsishvili to leave the program.

‘Serious Challenge’ For Georgia

Strong condemnation of Muxtarli’s reported abduction also poured in from Western countries and organizations and international rights groups.

“Azerbaijan has an appalling record of harassing and prosecuting government critics, and we are seriously concerned” about Muxtarli’s safety, Giorgi Gogia, the South Caucasus director at Human Rights Watch, told RFE/RL.

Amnesty International’s director for the South Caucasus, Levan Asatiani, called Muxtarli’s reported kidnapping “a deeply sinister development” for Azerbaijan, a country that he said is well-known for its “crackdown on journalists and human rights defenders.”

Asatiani called for Muxtarli’s immediate release and urged Georgian authorities to investigate the situation and “hold accountable all those involved in this gruesome operation.”

Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili said in a statement that Muxtarli’s “disappearance from Georgian territory” was a “serious challenge” for the country.

“Georgia is a regional leader in terms of protection of human rights and journalists in particular,” Margvelashvili said. “Upholding this standard is a matter of our state sovereignty.”

The Georgian government has been less condemnatory of the incident, Nodia says, and is urging people to wait for the probe to conclude before assuming any Georgian officials were involved in Muxtarli’s abduction.

Not-So-Warm Welcome

Many critics also dismissed the government’s offer of Georgian citizenship to Mustafayeva — which she refused, saying her husband is the one who needed a Georgian passport — noting that Muxtarli’s wife had her residency application rejected by Tbilisi just weeks ago.

Mustafayeva is one of several Azerbaijanis living in Georgia to experience such problems in recent months.

“Many [Azerbaijani] dissidents or oppositionists who are in Georgia were pressured to go elsewhere, they were denied residence permits, so…[Georgian officials] really consider this presence of Azerbaijani citizens — which their government considers social enemies — a problem for Georgia and they want to get rid of them,” Nodia says.

Azerbaijani opposition activist Dasqin Agalari, who was recently refused political asylum in Georgia, said that “we are all being politely told to leave the country,” Eurasianet.org reported.

“I think it’s obvious there is some kind of pressure by [Azerbaijan] on the Georgian government, which says, ‘You know we give you oil and gas and you depend on us energy-wise so you should do something about [the dissidents], it is unacceptable that all of our enemies are there and conspire against Azerbaijan,'” Nodia says. “And the Georgian government doesn’t want to alienate the Azerbaijani government. They don’t want to openly harass these people or hand them back to Azerbaijan but they don’t want to make the Azerbaijani government unhappy, either.”

Many observers point to Georgia’s dependence on Azerbaijan for its energy resources and to key Azerbaijani-funded transport and infrastructure deals in the Caucasus country as the reason for Georgia’s apparent pressure on Azerbaijan’s dissidents.

A social-media meme dubbed “Socartvelo” combines the name of Azerbaijan’s state oil company, SOCAR, with the native word for Georgia, Sakartvelo.

Blow To Reputation

The reputation of Georgia — whose citizens were recently granted visa-free travel to the European Union and which seeks to become a full-fledged member of that bloc as well as of NATO — is also taking a hit because of the Muxtarli incident.

“[It] is…a huge scandal that something like this could happen on Georgian soil,” Heidi Hautala, a Finnish member of the European Parliament, told RFE/RL. “I think it is very important to now clarify…through an independent and credible investigation who is…complicit in this horrible abduction.”

She said the European Parliament had a responsibility “to raise this question at the highest level.”

Nodia adds: “I think it is extremely embarrassing for Georgia because…basically [it’s] losing its reputation as an island of freedom in the Caucasus and it looks like…it is caving in to Azerbaijan, to the demands of the authoritarian government of Azerbaijan as well as from Turkey.”

Georgia is also being criticized for closing down a Turkish-run college in the seaport of Batumi late last year after the Turkish government said that institution was linked to the Gulen network, which Ankara accuses of carrying out last year’s failed coup attempt.