On 2 October 2018 a staff of brokers dispatched by the Saudi authorities strangled dissident Washington Put up columnist Jamal Khashoggi after he entered the consulate constructing in Istanbul. The revered journalist’s physique was dismembered and, in response to Turkish intelligence, dissolved in acid. The CIA mentioned Khashoggi’s state-employed assassins acted on the behest of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Since that darkish day, Turkey’s repute as a hub of transnational repression has grown.
Uyghur dissidents within the nation are one group feeling the consequences of China’s transnational energy. Turkey was as soon as seen as a haven for the persecuted folks from China’s northwest given the linguistic, cultural and spiritual overlaps, and was due to this fact residence to the biggest numbers of Uyghurs outdoors of China. Now the incidents of assaults of Uyghur dissidents are going up and up. In accordance with a 2023 report from Safeguard Defenders, greater than one-third of Uyghurs interviewed in Turkey mentioned that they had been harassed by Chinese language police or state brokers whereas within the nation. Main activists have been deported. It’s unclear about Turkey’s stance right here and so they have but to ratify an extradition treaty which Beijing signed in December 2020. Nonetheless, it’s removed from protected and if Turkey do ratify the treaty Uyghurs can be much more uncovered.
One other group to really feel the consequences are Iranian dissidents. Over the previous half-decade, Iranian intelligence brokers have carried out a number of operations on Turkish soil, at instances even aided by members of Turkey’s judiciary and police drive. In September 2023, a former Turkish prosecutor was sentenced to 11 years and eight months in jail for collaborating with Iranian intelligence. Among the many 15 others tried in courtroom had been two law enforcement officials. In 2019, the prosecutor allegedly took $50,000 in return for offering the placement of Mohammed Rezaei, a former Iranian navy officer, to Iranian intelligence.
The operation to kidnap Rezaei – performed utilizing the automobile of the Turkish state prosecutor – failed. The try to seize Shahnam Golshani, the supervisor of the Iranian web site Mesghal, additionally failed. An authority on the worth of laborious forex, Golshani’s web site was blocked in Iran in 2013 after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad misplaced management of the forex market and requested Golshani to publish decrease charges for laborious forex to calm folks, which he refused to do. There have been studies that the Courts of First Occasion issued the dying penalty towards Golshani. He fled the nation illegally over the border into Turkey in 2013.
Iranian intelligence did not seize Golshani and Rezaei however managed to abduct a former Iranian colonel, Mashali Firouze. One other ‘success’ got here in 2022, when the Iranian dissident Mohammad Bagher Moradi, 9 years after taking refuge in Turkey, left residence to purchase bread. He by no means returned. The police discovered his deserted automobile, and his household pointed to the Iranian intelligence as culprits. Moradi, a member of Saraye Ahl-e Ghalam (Writers’ Affiliation), had acquired a five-year jail sentence on the cost of ‘illegal gathering and collusion against national security’ whereas dwelling in Iran.
Trapped between Turkey and Iran
Esmaeil Fattahi, a dissident on the watchlist of Iranian intelligence, mentioned he can’t ignore these developments and simply proceed together with his life. Born in 1988, Fattahi has been dwelling in Turkey since 2015. His crime was to weblog concerning the political scenario in Iran. He was a part of a gaggle that labored clandestinely, distributing pamphlets, conducting secret conferences, and placing up graffiti to focus on human rights and ladies’s rights struggles inside Iranian factories.
First arrested aged 15 in Tabriz, the place he lived, Fattahi spent six months in jail. 4 years later, he was once more sentenced to 6 months. His arrest in 2010 led to a five-year jail time period. By the point of his launch, Fattahi turned satisfied he’d depart Iran. ‘When I left prison in 2015, I was 27, and I had spent around a fourth of [my life], six years, in prison,’ he informed Index.
After his launch, Fattahi discovered one other case had been opened towards him – for reporting on the torturous situations in Iran’s prisons to worldwide human rights organisations. Additionally, he couldn’t get employment. ‘The Iranian media called me “the dog of Israel and America” and claimed I was an agent, a communist,’ he recalled. The proprietor of a restaurant the place he labored provided his apologies earlier than firing Fattahi. ‘Once they learned who I was, it was over. Nobody wanted to take the risk.’
Fattahi made headlines in Turkey when, in 2021, he was arrested with three different Iranian dissidents within the Anatolian metropolis of Denizli for attending a protest occasion towards Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Conference. This Council of Europe treaty, which Turkey had been the primary to check in 2011, opposes violence towards girls and home violence. However as Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his far-right allies launched a conflict towards the concept of a culturally decided gender, they turned the treaty right into a hate object which they declare is defended by woke race traitors, and nefarious powers within the pay of George Soros.
Fattahi joined Leili Faraji and Zeinab Sahafi for the protest, took a banner and delivered a speech. He was joined by members of the Iranian LGBTQI+ neighborhood in Turkey. A month later, he acquired a name from the mom of Sahafi, who mentioned her daughter was detained. Two different telephone calls adopted. An ally, Mohammad Pourakbari Kermani, who hadn’t even participated within the protest, was additionally detained.
Fattahi didn’t return residence and headed to the police headquarters in Denizli, the place he was swiftly put behind bars. The 4 dissidents refused to signal a voluntary return doc and spent a month in a deportation centre in Aydın. Public furore and a viral social media marketing campaign adopted. Amnesty and Freedom Home pressured Turkey’s Inside Ministry. There was even a parliamentary query concerning the arrests. ‘We got out thanks to those,’ mentioned Fattahi.
These days he lives in a special Anatolian city. ‘Iran is a totalitarian state with not a shred of democracy, press freedom or freedom of expression,’ he mentioned. ‘Here in Turkey, police can detain you for your political views and a judge can, at most, sentence you to prison. In Iran, they hang you or subject you to whipping.’
Miniatürk, Istanbul. Cropped picture by Boris Dzhingarov through Wikimedia Commons
He’s nervous about being kidnapped. ‘For years, Iranian agents entered Turkey easily. Last year, a friend of ours was assassinated in Istanbul,’ he mentioned. The scenario is especially perilous in cities corresponding to Van, near the Iranian border. ‘Iranian agents tried to kidnap a friend of mine to Iran last month.’
Fattahi receives dying threats on social media on a regular basis and reads emails whose senders describe what they’ll ‘do’ to him ‘soon’. ‘I’ve been getting these for the previous seven years. I can’t simply ignore them,’ he mentioned.
Nonetheless, he feels fortunate. Many refugees reside in abject poverty in Turkey, with no monetary help and no work permits, which leads them to work illegally. Undocumented refugees do essentially the most difficult work for the longest hours and obtain the bottom wages. As a freelancer working from residence, Fattahi can not less than manage his life. ‘I order all my food and groceries from my phone. I try not to go out at all. I only go out to walk my dog, which I do very carefully. Most refugees work 12 hours outside, and many have committed suicide because of the conditions.’
Final 12 months, a good friend of Fattahi, who had been in Turkey for seven years, known as him to say he was going again. ‘I encountered so much racism here, and my wife left me because of our financial situation. I prefer going to prison in Iran than being here,’ Fattahi remembered him saying.
In 2019, the police broke down the door of Fattahi’s home, and he awoke with a gun subsequent to his head. 4 males in black balaclavas took him to the police headquarters. ‘There were cameras in the station, so they beat me up in the toilet,’ Fattahi mentioned. The next day, they set him free. When he sued the police who intimidated him, a courtroom handed him a seven-month jail sentence and a fantastic for ‘resisting security forces’.
Pondering the longer term, he’s significantly nervous about kidnapping makes an attempt performed by Iranian spies who can then return to Iran with none hurdles. ‘I have to be constantly careful about my relationships here,’ he mentioned.
The dispersing Russian Ark
Dissidents from different nations, corresponding to Eva Rapoport, who’s Russian, encounter completely different challenges. The cultural anthropologist and photographer left Russia in 2013 earlier than the annexation of Crimea. ‘I thought that the situation would keep deteriorating and one day all would go down in flames,’ she recalled. Rapoport moved from Moscow to Southeast Asia and lived in Indonesia for some time earlier than ending up in Turkey in 2020.
She rented an house in Istanbul, hoping issues would return to regular. However they went in the wrong way. The brand new anti-war wave of Russian immigration started, with 1000’s of liberal Russians and people against the conflict transferring to Turkey. Rapoport seen she had benefits in contrast with individuals who had left Russia with none preparation. ‘I had local knowledge about how to live in Istanbul,’ she mentioned. She determined to place that to good use.
Rapoport is a part of the Ark Venture, based in March 2022 as a response to the criminalization of Russians who disagree with the conflict in Ukraine. ‘The Ark is the first initiative that centrally helps people from Russia who left because of an anti-war stance,’ its web site pronounces. ‘Now, the audience of the Ark is about half a million people.’
It had been easy for Russians to go to Turkey, a preferred vacationer vacation spot because the Nineties. For years, scores of Russians got here to the Mediterranean haven of Antalya and stayed in all-inclusive motels. ‘For dissidents who take refuge in Turkey, they don’t really feel threatened, and right here they don’t really feel like aliens,’ Rapoport mentioned.
She had spent months organizing lectures on matters pertaining to the scenario in Russia but in addition addressing Turkish and Center Japanese historical past, tradition and politics. The programme – for which she chosen audio system from September 2022 till March 2023 – did very effectively. ‘Our most popular events were gathering over 100 people. We had one poetry reading in November which attracted 60 people.’ However in December 2022, issues took a flip for the more severe.
‘Turkish authorities stopped issuing residency permits. People began getting rejections. Nobody knew what was happening. By spring, lots of people who were going to stay left,’ Rapoport mentioned. Their departure was not voluntarily. As a substitute, they had been pushed out, their visas not renewed. There are numerous theories about why: some hyperlink it to strain from Putin, a robust ally of Erdoğan, to not present refuge to dissidents, but it surely’s equally attainable to clarify Erdoğan’s change of coronary heart as the results of the rise of anti-refugee sentiment among the many citizens.
Like Fattahi, Rapoport is anxious about the way forward for dissidents. ‘I don’t see my future even for the subsequent 10 months in Turkey,’ she mentioned. ‘I was quite enthusiastic here when the immigration began, right after the war and the first wave, and the second one in September, following mobilization. There was this feeling that Istanbul could become a new hub for Russian opposition culture, a good version of what Russian cultural and intellectual life could be. Then it became clear that people were not staying; people who were eager to start some projects here or had started businesses also didn’t have their residencies renewed. Folks left, and they’re going to preserve leaving.’
The Ark Venture, which conducts its communications through Telegram, has 1000’s of members in Turkey. Is Rapoport conscious of the destiny they share with Iranian dissidents? ‘There were jokes here about Russians and Iranians coming together and having an argument about whose passport is worse,’ she mentioned. At the same time as Russia falls beneath extra worldwide sanctions, Iranian passports are nonetheless worse by way of the variety of nations its holders can journey to, she added.
Suspended lives
Each Fattahi and Rapoport say their fundamental drawback isn’t understanding what the longer term holds. ‘I have no idea whether I’ll depart Turkey subsequent 12 months or in a decade. I can neither research, open a brand new enterprise or arrange a life,’ Fattahi mentioned. ‘I’m 35, and I’ve spent nearly a decade right here, not going to school and amassing nothing to safe my life. If I left Turkey in the present day, I’d start from scratch.’
Like Rapoport, Fattahi had tried to provoke cultural occasions for like-minded Iranian dissidents. He rented a restaurant the place they might learn books collectively and have weekly screenings of movies about social points, together with LGBTQI+ rights. ‘But we can’t do these now,’ he mentioned. ‘People in Iran think Turkey is a free country with freedom for women and the freedom to consume alcohol. They don’t realise Turkey isn’t a free and democratic nation till they begin dwelling right here.’
This text was initially printed within the 2024 spring challenge of Index on Censorship. Kaya Genç is Index’s Turkey contributing editor.
