On September 27, Turkmen activist Dursoltan Taganova was placed in the Selim Pasha deportation facility in Istanbul, the Memorial Human Rights Center reported .
The day before, at about 5 o'clock in the morning, two police officers came to the apartment where Taganov is renting a room, but she was not at home. The lodger, who opened the door, was told by the police that the girl had to come to the police station to sign some documents.
When the activist came to the police, she was detained.
In 2020 Dursoltan Taganova already spent three months in the deportation center after she was detained in the action of protest in July. She was released in October after a joint appeal by a number of international and Turkmen human rights organizations to the Turkish government.
According to the Turkmen Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, other Turkmen activists living in Turkey are also threatened with detention. One of the participants in the protest movements, Bayram Allalyev , who was summoned to the police on September 24, told about this . According to him, he saw a document in which there are 25 names of Turkmen activists, including Aziz Mamedov , Azat Khaitbaev , Jumasapar Dadebaev and others.
The policeman warned that they were ordered to send everyone on this list to a deportation center and advised those who have a valid passport to leave for a third country . The rest will be deported.
Some activists report increasing pressure on their relatives in Turkmenistan.
According to human rights activists, the persecution and extradition of Turkmen dissidents may be one of the conditions for the leadership of Turkmenistan to join the Cooperation Council of Turkic-speaking States (Turkic Council). The next summit of the Council will be held in November in Istanbul.
“Until recently, Ankara tried to distance itself from this problem, reacting sluggishly to the demarches of Turkmen diplomats, in particular, after an attempt to hold a rally in front of the Turkmen consulate in Istanbul on August 1, and to complaints to law enforcement agencies in connection with attacks by unknown same day. But on the eve of the preparations for the summit, the situation seems to have changed, ”writes Memorial.
In addition, according to human rights activists, during a recent business visit to Turkey, a certain person associated with the family of President Berdymukhamedov tried to find out from Turkish partners whether they could in any way intimidate or "punish" Turkmen activists in Europe and Turkey through criminal structures. It is reported that the Turkish partners did not support the proposal.
Recall that on September 2, the head of the Democratic Choice of Turkmenistan (DVT) opposition movement, Murad Kurbanov, was detained at the Istanbul International Airport . Later he was deported to France (Kurbanov is a citizen of France - ed.) And banned from entering Turkey for five years.
Source: Chronicles of Turkmenistan