A Uyghur man with a long-term residence permit in Turkey faces possible deportation to China after being detained by Turkish security forces, raising concerns among the Uyghur diaspora over their safety and rights in the country.
Yakup Celil was taken into custody on Tuesday and put in administrative detention at a removal center, according to the Uyghur Haber news website. The grounds for his detention and whether a formal deportation order has been issued remain unclear.
Celil reportedly called his wife from detention on Thursday, telling her that officials had informed him he could be deported to China. He is the father of two children, aged 3 years and 7 months.
Turkey has long served as a refuge for Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims from China’s northwestern Xinjiang region due to shared linguistic and cultural ties, as they have been subjected to mass arbitrary detention, torture and other abuses that rights groups and United Nations experts have described as crimes against humanity.
In addition to sharing a religion with the majority of Turkey’s population, Uyghurs — a Turkic ethnic group — also speak a similar language. An estimated 50,000 Uyghurs are currently living in Turkey, making it the largest Uyghur diaspora in the world. But a Turkey-China extradition treaty signed in 2017 that is still awaiting ratification by the Turkish Parliament has led to fears that it could be used to target Uyghurs in Turkey.
