İstanbul police on Tuesday detained a Uyghur woman with a valid residence permit and transported her to a removal center, raising concerns that she could be deported to China, the Uygur Haber news website reported.
Akide İsmail, 33, was taken into custody by plainclothes police at her home in İstanbul’s Sefaköy neighborhood. Her family said police gave no reason for her detention. Reports did not identify the removal center where İsmail is being held.
İsmail, who was born in Aksu in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, works as a Quran teacher in Sefaköy and is the primary provider for her two children as well as two younger brothers. One of her children reportedly has a kidney condition.
It remains unclear whether Turkish authorities have issued a deportation order for İsmail or on what legal grounds she is being held at the removal center.
Her family has expressed concern that she could be deported to China, where Uyghurs face serious human rights abuses.
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, many of whom have been subjected to mass arbitrary detention, torture and other abuses that rights groups and United Nations experts have described as crimes against humanity.
Human rights groups have warned that deporting Uyghurs to China would violate the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits states from returning people to countries where they face a serious risk of persecution or other serious human rights violations.
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.
